


Just Like a Faucet That Leaks and There is Comfort in the Sound

by JackEPeace



Category: I Am The Night (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, future relationship, some set during the series, some set post-series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28562907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/pseuds/JackEPeace
Summary: The only time he feels light, whole, is when he’s out on the water, balancing his weight with that of the ghosts he carries on his shoulders. At least there isn’t one more added to that group... one who didn’t need Jay Singletary to rescue her anyway. The rest he figures he can handle. He’s gotten to know them well enough anyway.-or-A collection of ficlets exploring Jay and Fauna post-show, all centered around different soundscapes.
Relationships: Fauna Hodel/Jay Singletary
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9





	1. August, 1965  (Hawaii)

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea was taken shamelessly from the amazing, amazing author MilkshakeKate (who I have become obsessed with recently), who created a series of fics centered around a "soundscape" which I thought would be really fun to do. So for each of the chapters, I'll post the soundscape that goes along with that story, if you want to enjoy it while you listen, or make your own! But also these little stories are just an excuse for me to keep playing around with Jay and Fauna and their dynamic together. I feel like after almost two years, I still have so much I need to say. 
> 
> And yes, this fic will eventually explore them in a romantic relationship, set several years after the end of the show. 
> 
> Also I love this fandom. It is very, very small, but I love the people who keep stumbling upon it and adding their talents and voices! Please come talk to me, everyone, I am very lonely here in my love for this show! 
> 
> Title comes from "Marching Bands of Manhattan" by Death Cab for Cutie.

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/tinRoofRainNoiseGenerator.php?l=00000000350037003800).

**August, 1965**

**Hawaii**

He isn’t expecting her to be waiting up for him. In fact, Jay isn’t really expecting to see her again at all, aside from the whole business of having to fly back to Los Angeles together, elbow-to-elbow, in what Jay graciously considers to be a tin can. That’ll be a pleasant flight, he’s sure. In true teenager fashion, Fauna is quite adept at giving the cold shoulder. 

Which is why it comes as a complete and total surprise when he pulls up in front of the hotel and finds her sitting outside, perched on the edge of the little patio outside the door, bathed in the sticky orange light thrown out from the uncovered bulb above the room number. 

For a minute, Jay stays where he is, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cools and the beginning taps of the rain on the roof of the car. The further he’d gotten from the leafy forest surrounding Tamar’s humble abode, the further, too, he’d gotten from Tamar, the less eerie the approaching storm had seemed. Without her wide-eyes, her resigned smirk, her campfire tales, it had been easier to think of the rumble of thunder and the drizzle of rain as exactly what is was: daily life in Hawaii. 

Jay is certain Fauna knows that he’s watching her from the driver’s seat, certain that she knows, too, that he’s trying to figure out how to face her. She looks so like her mother, here in the artificial light of the only bungalow in the row with illuminated windows. It’s late, but even still Jay doubts this place sees a lot of business. He also doubts that Fauna would be all that flattered by the comparison that his mind makes. 

Sighing, he goes to open the door, reaching for the camera on the passenger seat. It’s his most treasured possession, now. Or, at least, the roll of film inside is. The roll loaded with the photos of the paintings that Hodel had sent his daughter, macabre little souvenirs of dead women. Jay figures he shouldn’t be surprised. What else should he expect from a man who raped his own daughter and chased her off to Hawaii? 

The rain is picking up and Jay figures it’s probably now or never. It’s a bit of relief, seeing Fauna awake and sitting outside. He’d been debating for the entire drive, trying to figure out where it was worth it to try and creep into the hotel room, purely for the purpose of using the bathroom and changing out of his clothes in a space bigger than the backseat of the car. He hadn’t quite been sure how he’d felt about sneaking in and out of her room in the dark, not with stories of the boogeyman running through his mind, but now it seems like he might not have to do any sneaking at all.

Assuming she doesn’t start throwing her shoes at him, or something. 

Not that he thinks she’s the type to be waiting up just for the purpose of hurling footwear. 

Jay carefully tucks the camera under his arm, ducking his head against the insistent tapping of the rain drops on the back of his neck. He quickens his pace, the gravel crunching under his feet as he steps up the path toward the edge of the porch. He stands, uncertain, a foot from where Fauna’s own bare foot is nosing around absently in the bleached rocks. 

“Can I…” Jay isn’t sure how to finish that sentence. The rain is like a finger down the back of his spine, slipping underneath the collar of his shirt, and he holds the camera tighter to his chest. 

Fauna just nods, not looking at him as he steps up onto the porch and around her, more delicate in his steps than he can remember being in quite some time. He’s reluctant to touch her, even quickly, even by accident, even with her sitting directly in his path. 

He’s kept his suitcase in the room, reluctant to leave it in the trunk of his car, and it sits beside Fauna’s worn, cheap case, the buckles tarnished, the handle frayed from so many hands. Not that he thinks his own luggage or the stuff inside it is hardly anything to write home about. Jay ignores Fauna’s things, taking the film from the camera and wrapping it carefully into a pair of socks. Just in case. It had worked out well enough with the photos of Janice Brewster, after all. 

Jay straightens, glancing back over his shoulder, to where he can see Fauna silhouetted in the doorway. The last time he’d seen her, hours before, it had been before he was getting ready to drive back to Tamar’s home in the midst of the forest and he’d asked, like an idiot, “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Like they might still somehow have a sort of mother-daughter bonding experience on the heels of the bombshell Tamar had dropped earlier. 

And, anyway, what would he have done if Fauna had said yes? Needled Tamar into talking about George Hodel with Fauna sitting right there? 

But Fauna had only looked at him, a familiar expression on her face. Familiar in the sense that Jay was used to seeing it on the faces of many people before her. Disappointment. “You’re really going to talk to her.” 

Not a question, not really, but Jay knew he was going to give the wrong answer anyway.

“I have to.” 

Fauna had looked at him and he’d felt like he’d messed up, somehow, because Jay had no idea what he was supposed to read from her expression. So he’d just left, hurrying to the car and wishing for a drink, even if it would have made the twisting roads more difficult to navigate. 

So what is he supposed to do now? Join her on the porch for a little heart-to-heart? The idea makes him want to laugh out loud, though it would likely do little to endear him to Fauna. When has he ever had anything heartfelt or meaningful to say to anyone? 

Still, it seems better than the alternatives. Maybe not the heart-to-heart part, but the part where he stops standing in the middle of this room like an idiot or the part where he just ignores her and goes out into the car and tries to sleep like he hasn’t just been given the proof that he’d always wanted and even more. Oh, so much more. 

Jay just goes back outside and he leans against the door frame, trying to look anywhere but Fauna. The rain is picking up intensity, drumming against the tin awning overhead, sluicing off the corrugated edges and into the gravel and grass below. By morning, he figures, the rain will be gone, the sky beautiful and blue again. Tourists will get their perfect vacation. And Jay figures they’ll have clear skies for flying. 

“Well.” Fauna says finally and Jay is surprised, not just because he’s starting to come to the understanding that Fauna is a girl of few words anyway, but because she’s the one to break the silence in the first place. “Did you get what you needed?” 

He feels guilty, but he nods. “Yeah. I did, actually.” 

“Then I guess it was worth it.” 

Jay isn’t sure how to respond to that particular statement, though it doesn’t seem like Fauna really expects him to anyway. Her back is still to him and her dress, with all its bright colors, the one that had seemed so hopeful a few days before, now looks slightly ridiculous here, on this porch in the middle of the night with the rain beating down overhead. 

Even worse is the feeling in his chest, the certainty that, yeah, it was worth it. The voice in the back of his mind, the one telling him that all he’d had to sacrifice to get to talk to Tamar, to get the photos, to get the truth, was this girl here in front of him. He rubs at the building headache, a hollowness in the center of his stomach. 

“Did she ask about me?” Her voice is quiet, her tone agitated, annoyed, though Jay figures the brittleness isn’t for him at all, but to conceal her own embarrassment. 

Jay clears his throat and the hollowness grows. “Uh. Yeah. I think she was hoping you might have changed your mind and wanted to see her.” 

Fauna looks over her shoulder, unamused. “Still a liar.” 

Jay doesn’t even have a good lie to change her mind. 

Thunder rumbles in the distance, the trees shaking in the wind, shedding water droplets. For a beat, two, the only sound comes from the rain overhead. Then Fauna gets up, her bare feet soundless on the square patio. “We’re still leaving tomorrow, right?” 

What could he get, with one more day? What could he accomplish? Or, maybe, he could even do what he’d promised he would: create some sort of charming reunion, bring mother and daughter together for some ridiculously overpriced pancake breakfast where everything is somehow okay in spite of, well, everything. 

But Jay doesn’t think he can stand to have told her even one more lie. So he nods. “Yeah. Tomorrow. Our flight is in the afternoon.” 

Fauna nods, satisfied, and steps past him and into the room. She leaves the door open, an invitation, Jay figures, to use the sink, the bathroom, to make himself as comfortable as possible before he has to stretch out in the backseat of the rented car. But, for a moment, Jay stays where he is, trying to ease the tightness in his chest, the throbbing in his head. Suddenly, he can’t wait to be back in L.A., putting down the first words in the story that will change everything. 

At least, that’s what he keeps telling himself, anyway. 


	2. September, 1965 (Nevada/Mexico)

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/thunderNoiseGenerator.php?l=75785554757828232423)

**September, 1965**

**Nevada/Mexico**

She can’t be entirely sure what it is that wakes her, but it seems easy enough to blame it on the storm. It feels like the thunder has been building for days, the heat heavy and oppressive across the desert, the grey clouds gathered in the horizon like some kind of metaphor that she’s too hot, too listless, too tired to figure out.

Fauna rolls over, the bed creaking beneath her. It feels too small, now. The room feels too small. Everything feels too small: her nightgown, the house, her skin. She feels like one more twist will split a seam somewhere. On her side, she can just barely see the outline of the window, the black sky outside. The thunder rumbles, not close enough to rattle the windows, the air undoubtedly sticky and listless outside. She used to hate storms, the way a little girl might, one who didn’t know better. Now, Fauna just wishes the storm would break and take the tension in the air with it. 

If only it were that easy. She has a feeling that a good old-fashioned thunder storm isn’t going to do much to dispel the tension in the house. 

Some things are starting to get back to normal, Fauna reasons. Jimmy Lee, home finally from the hospital with her stitches and the wrinkles around her eyes and on her forehead, is relieved enough to have her home that she’s decided not to scrimp on the demands or the guilt. The doctor’s orders to rest and take it easy have been the perfect ammunition for Jimmy Lee, happy to point out that she has to rest, you heard the doctor, and a white doctor too, so he clearly knows what he’s talking about. It’s a strange relief, having Jimmy Lee talk to her like that, treat her like she isn’t made of broken glass, like she’s still just there to boss around and fuss at because the rest of her problems are too big to even try to tackle. And it’s kept her out of school, something Fauna is going to capitalize on as long as she can. She’s not sure how to return to the halls, to the teachers, to the homework, the stares of her classmates. She’s not sure how to explain to her friends where she’s been. Not sure what to say to Lewis. To any of them. 

If they’d thought she was different before, Fauna can’t even begin to imagine what they’ll think of her now. 

She hasn’t been sleeping well, anyway, often too tired in the mornings to even think about making herself presentable, to gather her things, to put her carefully shined shoes on the dirt path to the school building. Jimmy Lee sleeps late too, thanks to the vodka and the medicine from the hospital and Fauna is grateful, because it’s usually morning when she finally closes her eyes long enough to actually sleep.

Nightmares, maybe. Ones she can’t really remember, not rightfully anyway. Not just impressions of the basement or the man in it, but of the women, too, the ones she knows about only in passing. It feels too superstitious, too much like Big Mama’s old wives tales to really think about ghosts and spirits and lingering energy down there in the basement, to think of those other women sharing that space with her, hovering where her father had killed them. But still, Fauna thinks she dreams of them, that when she opens her eyes in the middle of the night, she blames it on the rumbling thunder because anything else seems to embarrassing to admit.

The only time she’d left the house since her return had been to go to the library, something Fauna had never done before. The library is still segregated, holding fast to the de facto laws that keep the cops’ jaws sharp and teenage girls’ words sharp. But now, it had seemed almost mindless to walk into the library and it hadn’t felt like winning, like a victory, or like a betrayal. It had just felt like opening a door, stepping into a place that smelled like dust and sunlight and books, so many books, so many she had longed to touch and open and inhale, and she had gone to the microfiche and tried not to let the beady-eyed man in a straining button-down shirt make her feel stupid as he explained it to her. It had taken all day but she hadn’t minded, had been grateful to be out of the house and in place that hadn’t felt too small, for once, and she’d pushed through articles and articles until she’d finally found what she’d been looking for. Jay had mentioned it only in passing, a weary, reluctant admission, one that had come too late for Fauna to really feel anything but exhausted. He’d said the words like he expected her to know what they meant and she hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t been willing to sound like she cared. Only back in Sparks, in one of her sleepless nights, had she really thought about it again. The Black Dahlia. A person, apparently, that her father had killed. Fauna had rolled the words around in her mind for days until she’d finally gotten up one morning and walked herself down to the library. She’d learned the girl’s name, her real name, something that seemed important. Elizabeth Short. She’d been transfixed by the grainy black and white photos, staring at them until her eyes became blurry, her heart racing. Her father had done that. And he would have done it to her, too. 

She’d left the library without so much as looking at the titles on the spines of any of the books. 

Now, Fauna tries not to think about the photographs. Or the basement. Or her father. It won’t help much, not in this too-small room, not in this heat, not with the thunder rumbling in the distance. She wishes she could crack herself open and find the person she used to be buried inside. 

Instead, she just rolls over again, onto her back, folding her hands over to stomach as she stares up at the ceiling. Like she often does, she thinks about him. About Jay. Something she allows herself only in the middle of the night, when it seems easier to excuse. She feels like she understands him, now, just a little bit more. She wishes she could tell him so, if he would even believe her. The thunder had been rumbling that night, too, their first in Hawaii, when she’d woken up to the sound of his screaming, loud and clear despite the distance between them, the closed hotel room door, the car. She’d laid there, heart beating in her chest, uncertain as to what she was supposed to do, a little bit afraid, too. 

Now, it seems stupid to think she’d ever been afraid of Jay at all, now that she knows what it really feels like to be afraid. But even that fear doesn’t taste as sharp and metallic in her mouth as Fauna thinks it should. Before the fear really settles over her, before it takes root, she thinks about Hodel, about her father, about how he’d looked crumpled on the ground, incensed first and then afraid. That fear had been enough to get rid of her own. 

She wishes she could ask Jay about that, too. She wishes she could ask if him he had been afraid, in the war; if seeing the fear in the eyes of the men he was about to kill had helped take away his own. 

Fauna almost wishes that she, too, could wake up screaming, just to relieve some of the tightness in her chest. To split herself open. To make a sound. 

But she doesn’t. Because she’s good at being quiet. At keeping her head down. Good at trying to keep people from looking too closely at her. But she’s impatient, too. Tired of waiting for the storm to break. 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

When the storm finally breaks, Jay is relieved. The sound of the thunder rumbling in the distance had been starting to get under his skin, tightening the hairs on the backs of his arms and against the nape of his neck, making him restless and impatient in a way that saw him pacing the length of the shitty motel room he’d managed to rent this week. 

Finally, with the thunder growling good and loud, the rain slapping the sidewalk and palm fronds, Jay feels nothing but relief. He’s been here for a while, almost a month, if his memory can be trusted in any way, and he feels like he’s spent most of that time wondering if it was ever going to storm. 

He likes it here, only because he doesn’t understand anything. Not the language. Not the signs. Not the glares people give him. Not even what his next step is. Instead, Jay just goes to the beach. He does odd jobs, peppering his stilted English with hand gestures. He moves from one crappy room to the next. 

He learned the Spanish words for  _ beer _ and  _ bar _ pretty quickly, though. 

Jay wonders how long he’s going to be able to keep calling what he’s doing here  _ hiding out _ . It’s not exactly like he hadn’t kept his promise to Bills, assuring the man that he would get rid of Hodel. So at least they’re square, more or less, on that account. Even if it had really been Fauna who got rid of the man, something that doesn’t surprise Jay in the slightest. In fact, it seems perfectly fitting. 

He’s just worried about the rest of it, whether Billis will really come after him for the murder of Janice Brewster. Sometimes Jay doesn’t didn’t think it would really be a bad gig, the whole prison thing. Worst place to dry out, even worse than a Mexican motel room with stains in the ceiling, but otherwise not so bad, maybe. 

It annoys him, really, that he wants to go back to L.A. Back to the city that has done nothing but kick his ass and gotten its entertainment in trying to see how far down it could keep Jay Singletary. Why should he want to go back there, anyway? 

At least here he’s taken up surfing. Even if he hasn’t picked up a pen since he’s been here. 

He’d kept that promise to Fauna, at least, the assurance that he wouldn’t write about her. That he would keep her story to himself. He’d meant the words when he’d said them, so focused on walking out of that house with her that everything else had seemed like a fair enough trade.  _ You can tell it. I don’t mind _ . Sometimes Jay hears her voice, how she, too, had just sounded resigned and defeated and he hasn’t wanted that for her. Like somehow if by not writing, he can give her something back. 

Jay pushes open the window, glad it doesn’t stick like the last one, and lets the sound of the thunder and the rain fill the room. It’s hot and stale inside the room and in some ways Jay feels even less human here than he did back in L.A. The only time he feels light, whole, is when he’s out on the water, balancing his weight with that of the ghosts he carries on his shoulders. 

At least there isn’t one more added to that group, one in the shape of a sad-eyed waif from Nevada. One who didn’t need Jay Singletary to rescue her anyway. The rest he figures he can handle. He’s gotten to know them well enough anyway. 

One of the many advantages of being a refugee is that he doesn’t have anything to fill his days with, no one expecting anything from him, no one thinking he’s just a disappointment when he doesn’t do any of the things he’d sworn he would. Instead, Jay just stands, listening to the weather, to the thunder, and it feels like a relief, an exhale, a balm. 

When the storm clears, he figures it’s as good an excuse as any to leave the apartment. Maybe even if it’s just to walk to the corner store and grab another pack of  _ cerveza _ . At least before it gets too hot again. 

He doesn’t know what possesses him, what makes him bypass the corner store and the bar he frequents and go a little further, toward the place where he more or less has an address. Sometimes he gets thinks from L.A., forwarded by his landlord, the letters nothing really that he even wants, just reminders of things he’d left behind, that the only people who miss him are the ones who think he has money to give them. He doesn’t even know why he bothers to check at all, not when it leaves him feeling worse than he had before, which is really saying something, honestly. 

Jay sifts through the bit of mail waiting there, pausing when he comes across one envelope that has his name handwritten across the front, rather than in the impersonal type of some poor secretary. He knows, immediately, who the letter is from. 

Jay takes the letter, leaving the rest. Again, he bypasses the bars, the stores, his stuffy piece of shit room. And he goes to the beach, instead. His church, or the closest thing to it that he figures he’ll ever have. 

Seems like a fitting enough to tear open the envelope and find out what might be waiting for him inside. 


	3. August, 1969 (Los Angeles)

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/customCalmCafe.php?l=40000040350000350000)

**August, 1969**

**Los Angeles**

Jay is getting a little tired of dead girls on the front pages of the newspaper. 

He knows that’s awful to say, that he should join in with the rest of the whispered gossip, the head-shaking, the salacious conversation that always, after a guilty pause, ends with  _ well, isn’t it just awful? _ Like people have to justify their rumors by assuring those listening-in that they sympathize, they really do, with the dead starlet and all her friends. 

Jay just wishes they would find something else to write about. 

But this is L.A. and dead stars are pretty much the city’s bread-and-butter. He squints, rubbing at the furrow between his eyes and says, out loud, “Remind me why I wanted to come back here.” 

Ohls isn’t privy to the thoughts in his mind, the string of thoughts that causes his question. But he doesn’t miss a beat anyway, shaking his head as he stabs a fork into the runny eggs on his plate. “Beats me.” 

Jay leans back against the cracked vinyl of the seat, studying his friend rather than the front page of the paper being read by the business-suited man at the counter. It seems like the sort of place people in suits have no business, not greasy diners before eight AM, where the food is bad and the coffee is worse. Why Ohls likes this place, Jay still hasn’t figured out. But after pulling a night-shift, Jay figures that Ohls gets to decide where he goes for coffee and breakfast before making it home to crash. 

When he’d gotten back to L.A. a year or so ago, Ohls had been the only person Jay was interested in looking up. It’s hard to sever the tie of the one person who really understands you. Ohls had been happy enough to see him, surprised and curious, and hadn’t batted an eyelash when Jay had asked if he could sleep on his couch for a little while. After getting used to not talking about anything, after giving a half-hearted story full of half-truths to anyone who might have thought to ask, it had been strange for Jay to tell the bits and pieces of what had happened to Ohls, to put himself back to who he’d been in the years before, on the night he’d left the city.

Sometimes Jay doesn’t think he’s all that different from that man anyway. 

“You should’ve gone up the coast,” Ohls continues, unbothered by Jay’s silence. “See something green for a change. Breathe some fresh air.” 

Jay smirks, reaching for his coffee without actually intending to drink anything from it. “What do I need fresh air for?” 

Ohls just chuckles, finishing his eggs. “Yeah, what do I know? I can’t get out of this city either.” He shakes his head. “You think about what I said? Coming out on Saturday?” 

Jay makes a noise in the back of his throat, letting his eyes wander as he tries to figure out how to tell Ohls in no uncertain terms that going out to a bar with him and a bunch of his cop buddies sounds like a bad time and he knows a thing or two about a bad time. The door to the diner swings open and he’s grateful for the distraction, to have something else to focus on other than Ohls’ question. 

At first, Jay sees just another person, like the business suit, who doesn’t look like she belongs in a place like this. Her skirt is too sharp, her blouse still stiff and clean enough to make it obvious that it’s brand new, that it has yet to be wilted by the L.A. heat. Her hair is long, straight, shiny underneath the patterned headband. The potential there, the hopeful possibility, not only in her outfit but also in her straight shoulders, her lifted chin, almost makes Jay ache. He looked like that once, he thinks, walking into an editor’s office when he was seventeen-years-old.

It takes him a second longer of staring to realize that he knows her. 

That, even years later, a lifetime, really, he can still see her in that last moment, wearing his bloody shirt in the middle of the street. 

“Jay? Jay!” Ohls is looking at him with concern laced through his confusion. The expression on his face makes it obvious Ohls has already called his name several times. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

Jay clears his throat, trying to pull his gaze away. He’s embarrassed to find he’s gone rigid in his seat, that his chest is tight from the breath he’s been holding. “I...uh…” He looks away from Fauna as she walks toward the counter, trying to get the attention of the waitress behind it. “I think I did.” 

Usually, he doesn’t see his ghosts in places like this. With all this noise, all these people, all the reminders of where he is now. But usually his ghosts aren’t of people who aren’t dead, either. 

Ohls glances around, clearly trying to spot whoever has captured Jay’s attention. Jay figures he has to give himself away pretty easily, his gaze locked on Fauna as she stands beside the counter, talking to the tired looking woman on the other side. Ohls looks skeptical, his gaze flicking back toward Jay. “How do you know  _ her _ ?” 

Jay can’t fault his friend for his doubt. Fauna is a new penny and Jay thinks he probably should have been retired to the mint long ago. “Uh…” He thinks, for a moment, about shaking his head, denying his comment, assuring Ohls  _ oh, I thought I knew her but actually… _ and then just agreeing to go out on Saturday to change the subject.

But the words are suddenly coming out of his mouth. “She’s the granddaughter.” Jay figures Ohls doesn’t hear the slight pause in his words, the faltering that hints at a lie. Though he likes to consider it a promise kept, a way to hide a few of Fauna’s secrets. “Hodel’s.” 

“No shit.” Ohls looks back toward Fauna with a renewed interest that makes Jay want to kick him under the table. “Huh.” 

Fauna seems largely unaware of their attention, nodding along to whatever it is that the waitress is saying. Though, when Fauna’s eyes slide in their direction, Jay knows immediately that she’s been aware of them there all along, full of the sixth sense he thinks all women must have. 

Her eyes settle on his and her eyebrows furrow together, a ripple in the otherwise still pond of her features. For a single, terrifyingly embarrassing and pathetic moment, Jay thinks that she doesn’t recognize him at all. But then Jay can see it in her eyes, not so much a flicker of recognition but just an understanding, like she’s been expecting him to be here all along. 

He’s almost grateful that Fauna doesn’t move in his direction. That she doesn’t smile. That she doesn’t even wave her hand to show that they’re anything more than strangers. He has no idea how he would be expected to respond to such a thing.

It’s a relief, almost, when Fauna turns back to her conversation with the waitress, nodding one final time, before taking a proffered piece of paper and closing her fingers around it. She turns to go and Jay just watches her. 

“Blast from the past, huh?” Ohls says with little gravity or interest, his words reminding Jay that he isn’t sitting there by himself. 

Everything seems to come back into focus. Ohls. The sounds of the diner. The murmurs of conversation. The smell of bad coffee. And the ringing of the bell above the door when Fauna pushes it open and steps into the parking lot. 

Jay sighs, tapping his leg, his knee bouncing up and down. He doesn’t know, really, what he’s supposed to do next. Just brush this off his shoulders and chalk it up to a random coincidence in a city of millions. Or is he supposed to let himself be drug back there again, to the years before, to the person he was, to the things he did and saw and said. 

It feels ridiculous, suddenly, just to let Fauna walk outside. 

Still, Jay sits, bouncing his leg, trying to listen as Ohls tells some story about his shift that he thinks is funny but that can’t catch Jay’s attention at all. It should be enough, Jay thinks, to have seen her. To know that she’s okay, to have that little worry that’s always lurked in the back of his mind be put to rest. She doesn’t need him chasing her down the sidewalk, not like he did all those years before. 

And besides, a glance at the neon clock on the diner wall tells him it’s been ten minutes since Fauna left. Is he just expecting to find her, again, purely by chance? 

Jay gets up before he can keep thinking about it. “I’ll be back.” He doesn’t give Ohls a chance to voice his confusion. 

He leaves the diner, stepping into the parking lot. It’s hot, too hot, and the heat makes waves on the cracked parking lot. The bus is at the corner, already pulling away, squeaking as it puffs away from the sidewalk, and Jay feels a twinge in his chest, a disappointment that he doesn’t want to admit to. An annoyance, too, that he hadn’t bothered to try and go after her before. 

But maybe this is good. At least, that’s what he tells himself. What would he say, anyway? 

When Jay turns around, going to reach for the curved door handle, he sees her, standing to his right, by the corner of the diner. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her brow furrowed, and she looks annoyed, more than anything.

It’s exactly how Jay remembers her. 

Jay clears his throat because it’s better than doing nothing at all. Fauna looks at him, there in her new clothes, and her flats, and the piece of paper from the waitress still in her fingers. That’s what he seizes on, like an idiot. “Are you looking for a job?”

Of all the things he could say, that’s what he goes with. Though, Jay thinks, how else to you begin a conversation with someone who has been through the things that they have? 

Fauna looks down at her hand, as though she’d completely forgotten everything else. “Oh. Yeah. Well, trying anyway.” 

“You want to work in a piece of shit place like this?” 

Fauna looks entirely unamused by his comment. “I want a place that will pay me.” 

Jay scoffs, nods, wishes he was better at this kind of thing. “So you live here now?” 

“I just moved. Figured...why not.” Fauna frowns, looking at her feet. “I just couldn’t stay in Sparks anymore.” 

Jay nods. If there’s one thing he understands, it’s the desperate need to get out of a small town. To get away from something. To try and be someone else. He can’t exactly fault her for coming  _ here _ . He did exactly the same thing. 

“Can I…” Jay stops, giving himself a moment, a last chance to back out, to do something smart, maybe. But, as always, he talks himself out of it. “I can buy you a cup of coffee...maybe not here but...somewhere decent. We could talk or…” 

_ Or not _ , he thinks about saying. Because why would Fauna need to talk to him? This, Jay knows, has always been his problem. He just can’t let things go. 

There’s a pause and, like before, Jay can’t read anything in her face. If only he’d learned to hide his secrets so well. 

“Look, we don’t-” 

“Okay,” Fauna says, before Jay can trip over himself to turn the suggestion into something else, something that saves him some embarrassment. “Okay. I could do coffee.” 

Jay smiles, nods. “Okay. Let me…” He points toward the door. “I’ll be right back.” 

He leaves her there to say goodbye to Ohls, half-convinced that Fauna really is just some ghost, a specter of his imagination, a product of the heat. That when he leaves the diner again, she won’t be there waiting for him, that she’ll have disappeared with the heat rippling off the asphalt. It makes him move quicker, fumble out some bad excuse to Ohls, to grab his jacket and leave, something that might make him embarrassed, later. 

By the time he gets to the door, Jay is so convinced that Fauna will be gone that he can’t imagine it going any other way. 

When he opens the door again, there she is, exactly how he left her. Jay exhales, hoping his relief doesn’t show on his face. “Okay. Ready?” 

Fauna nods and, if Jay isn’t mistaken, there might be a bit of relief in her eyes too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me making another reference to Sharon Tate in another "I Am the Night" fic


	4. October, 1969 (Los Angeles)

Listen to the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/oceanNoiseGenerator.php?l=00400017263442372923)

**October, 1969**

**Los Angeles**

“I can’t believe you haven’t been here yet.” 

Fauna frowns, though there’s nothing but gentle amusement in Jay’s tone, the hint of a smile on his face. She’s noticed that he smiles a lot, but that it hardly ever reaches his eyes. It seems to be a default sort of expression, one he wears to make himself look agreeable, friendly, capable. She wonders what it would take to get a genuine smile out of him, one that makes his eyes crinkle and comes with a laugh that doesn’t sound like he’s chuckling at some joke made at his own expense. 

“I’ve been busy,” she says, which feels a bit like an understatement. “Working.” 

And trying to make her new apartment feel like home. And trying to make Los Angeles feel like home. Fauna feels like she’s been busy trying to convince herself that she belongs here. 

“Well, I guess better late than never,” Jay says as he finally slips the car into a parking spot, pulling the keys from the ignition. “I hope you’re ready to have your life completely changed.” 

Fauna rolls her eyes, which she suspects was his intention. “It’s the beach,” she says flatly, as though she’s seen it before and can justify the unimpressed tone of her voice. 

“It’s a rite of passage,” Jay assures her. “You’ll be a real Californian now. Along with every other tourist in the state.” He chuckles in that soft way of his, punctuating his words with a little shake of his head. Fauna figures she’s not the first person to puzzle over the gestures of Jay Singletary, though she wonders why his barely-there smile, the soft brush of his laugh, intrigue her so much when she’s standing here, so close to the place that she figures people travel across the country to visit. 

It’s chillier than Fauna had anticipated and she’s glad she’d thought to bring along a cardigan, dressing for a trip to the library or Sunday dinner rather than a trip to the beach. Though she is wearing her two-piece beneath her blouse and skirt, though she has yet to decide if she’s actually going to do more than stick her feet in to the water so she can say that she has. Fauna tucks her arms around herself, the wind tugging at her hair so that it tickles her cheeks. Jay slips on his sunglasses and, when he seems to realize that she’s hanging back, uncertain, he steps forward, leading the way through the parking lot and toward the sand. 

Even without Jay, Fauna figures she could have found her way easily enough. It would be impossible to miss the miles of beach, the thickening of the tourists, the cluster of shops and kiosks and buskers all around. All she’d really have to do would be to follow the noise, not only the whispered promise of the waves but the shouts of children, the occasional shriek of what she assumes is joy, the laughter and shouting and the calling of birds. But Fauna doesn’t mind following at Jay’s heels, doesn’t mind that she isn’t here alone. It’s a nice change of pace for how she feels like she’s been for the past months of her life. Years, if she’s being honest. There’s something about being with Jay that makes her feel like she isn’t set apart, kept at an arm’s distance even by those who claim to have accepted her. She figures that might be the silver-lining of having someone know all your dirty little secrets.

“Thanks,” Fauna says, as the asphalt becomes sand and her feet shift to adjust to the unfamiliar surface. “For wanting to come.” 

Jay nods without looking back at her. Fauna figures they’ve had most of their conversations like this, looking anywhere but each other. At coffee cups. At plates of food. At tail-lights in traffic. At the rows of bodies clustered on the beach in the middle of fall like it’s just a summer’s day. “Sure. Beats what I was going to do anyway.” 

This, too, is a staple of their time together. An invitation wrapped in an assurance:  _ I know you’re busy but maybe… _ An acceptance disguised as an excuse:  _ I don’t mind, you’re saving me from…  _ Usually, it’s Jay who is seeking her out, swinging by the coffee shop she’d found to employ her during her first week in L.A., when she was so certain that someone was going to look at her and know without a doubt that she didn’t belong here.

It had been strange, running into Jay, and feeling like he was the only person who looked at her like she was exactly where she was supposed to be. 

This time, though, it had been Fauna who picked up the phone, feeling listless and impatient with the day stretching out in front of her. Lonely, maybe, though she knows she would never admit to it. Her roommates had been out and, anyway, it hadn’t mattered, Fauna wouldn’t have wanted to spend the day with them anyway. They’d been a cohesive unit before she’d answered their ad for wanting a third person, the two of them laughing and speaking in the abridged type of conversation that came from knowing someone well enough that you could anticipate what they were going to say before they even bothered to finish their sentence. They’re nice enough, Fauna thinks, though they don’t seem to know what to make of her any more than anyone back in Sparks did, even though they only see the girl right in front of them. She thinks that’s her favorite part of being here, that that shiny new feeling of relief hasn’t worn off yet. She’s a stranger, she’s exactly what she tells people she is. There’s no troublesome, drunken mother that everyone knows. No house in the colored part of town with its dirt patch lawn and couch cushions that smell like smoke. No colored girl with light skin and pretty eyes that could never figure out how to be dark enough or white enough. Her new roommates assume that she’s just like everyone else in the city, that she’s here to be an actress or a model or a singer and Fauna hasn’t bothered to correct them yet. They haven’t pressed, either, content to circle around her, to take the rent money she leaves on the counter, to make plans for their weekend without offering to include her. Fauna thinks she would say no, anyway, and figures they know it, too. 

But today, she’d found herself almost wishing that they had asked; she thinks she would have gone along with them, wherever they’d disappeared to. Fauna hasn’t figured out yet where it is that happy, smiling, unbothered girls go in this city. After pacing the apartment for a bit, after flipping restlessly through a book, through the day’s paper, through the records she’d brought with her, trying to find something to fill the apartment with, Fauna had sighed, annoyed with herself as she’d picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed the number Jay had given her. He’d answered, sounding confused and half-asleep even though it was creeping closer to lunch and she’d thought about apologizing and hanging up, or maybe just hanging up without saying anything at all, but she’d just said, “I want to go to the beach” with so much conviction that it had suddenly become true.

The silence on the other end had been scratchy, long enough to make Fauna regret ever having picked up the phone at all, long enough to make her wonder if Jay had been sincere when he’d given her the number or if it had been the sort of thing that people did because it was polite and not because he actually wanted her to call him. But then Jay had cleared his throat and said, “Okay. What’s your address? I’ll come pick you up.” 

She’d given it to him before she could change her mind. 

Now, Fauna is glad that she had. Being outside has soothed some of the restless impatience that had tightened her skin, quieting the buzzing in her bones. She knows that she and Jay make an odd pair but being with him feels more familiar, more reassuring, than trying to figure out how to be with her roommates. She wonders if he feels it too, if that’s why he’s made a habit of visiting the coffee shop, of seeming to show up just at the right times to sweet-talk himself into a free coffee and her acceptance of his suggestions to grab lunch or an early dinner. 

“What were you doing anyway?” Fauna asks, the question more accusatory than she intends it to be. She tries to soften it by adding, “You sounded like you were still asleep.” 

Jay grins in that way of his, the  _ if I’m also smiling then we’re just two people sharing a joke  _ way that he seems to always rely on. “Course not. I was shining my shoes. Pressing my shirts. Isn’t that what responsible people do on a Saturday afternoon?” 

Fauna lifts an eyebrow. “Sorry to interrupt.” 

“And miss your first trip to the beach? The shoes can wait, Fauna,” he assures her. 

She likes when he says her name. Mostly because he makes it sound like it belongs to her and not like it’s a dress that she has to keep tugging on to make sure it fits right.

When the ocean actually comes into view, Fauna can’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. It seems far from spectacular, with the number of people crowding around, the collection of people in the surf and on the shore and out in the waves, the impossibility of feeling like she and Jay are the only two people experiencing anything about this moment. It isn’t until she’s looking out at the waves that Fauna realizes what it is that she’d really wanted. “I thought it would be more like Hawaii,” she admits quietly. 

Jay studies the waves, both of them standing together, looking toward the horizon rather than each other. “Yeah, not quite the same, I guess,” he says finally. “Hard to beat Hawaii.” 

Fauna scrunches up her nose, trying to push the thought from her mind, the memory of it. Why should she long for any part of that trip? “Well,” she says firmly, reaching down to slip off her shoes, “we never went to the beach there either.” 

The sand is soft and warm between her toes, a reassurance, at least. She curls up her toes, trying to bury them into the sand. Jay glances at her and then starts forward. “Come on. You’ve gotta at least put your feet in.” 

No one seems to pay them any mind as they weave through the sunbathers, the running children, the couples holding hands along the shoreline. It’s another thing Fauna likes about being here: no one ever looks at her longer than necessary. In a city full of beautiful faces, hers is so easily swallowed up. 

The surf rushes around her ankles and Fauna steps back, jerking her head in Jay’s direction. “It’s cold.” That, too, sounds accusatory. 

But he smiles and she wishes she could see his face better beneath his glasses. “Rite of passage, I told you.” 

Fauna wants to reach for him, to tug him into the surf with her, but, knowing Jay, it would turn into some sort of game that would end with them both in damp, sandy clothes and she’s trying to put off another trip to the laundromat for as long as possible. So, she just crosses her arms over her chest, stepping back toward the waves, letting them wash over her feet and ankles again. Jay doesn’t seem to need her coaxing anyway, because it doesn’t take him long before he’s there beside her, the cuffs of his pants rolled up but slipping, sure to be damp before they make it back to the car. 

“Ta da,” Jay says, sweeping out a hand as though to encompass everything around them: the ocean, the sand, the people, the hazy horizon line. “The beach.” As though he had delivered it just for her. 

Fauna lifts a hand to try and tame down some of her wild hair, brushing it away from her cheeks, tightening her fist to try and hold it in place.  _ Hawaii was better _ , the sharp part of her wants to say. The same part of her that doesn’t join in with her roommates when they laugh, or smile at the college boys who come into the coffee shop and ask for her number, the part that holds Jimmy Lee to her word, letting the last words the woman said to her be an assurance than if she left again there would be nothing to come back to this time. But something about Jay, about being here with him, about watching him watching her, softens that sharpness, eases the pressure of it in her chest, makes it feel less like it’s about to puncture something vital. It feels easier to breathe, standing here with him. 

So she nods, because she does want to be here. Because she was relieved when he picked up the phone. Because she’s already worried about the time when he decides not to come into the coffee shop, when he isn’t cajoling her to try different hole-in-the-wall places in the city. Because she worries about the day he offers an excuse for why he can’t go with her. “I like it.” Fauna pulls in a breath, the smell of salt and fish and sun and sand and maybe even Jay there beside her. “It’s beautiful.” 

Jay’s smile looks more sincere than usual, but she still can’t tell if it reaches his eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses. “I can’t remember the last time I came here. Maybe we should do this kind of thing more often.” 

Fauna doesn’t ask if he means going to the beach or going to the beach together. She doesn’t ask him to clarify, because she doesn’t want it to matter to her. 

It already seems like enough, to be here with him, the ocean swirling around their ankles. 


	5. December, 1969 (Los Angeles)

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/fireworksNoiseGenerator.php?l=60996060996060606060)

**December, 1969**

**Los Angeles**

It takes Jay completely by surprise when Danielle, his editor-in-chief's secretary, asks him what he’s doing for New Year’s. They’re both by the coffee pot, Jay because he can’t sit another minute at his desk without some kind of distraction and Danielle, presumably, because their boss can’t seem to go thirty minutes without caffeine. Even if the caffeine does come in the form of stale, acrid coffee. 

He’s been working for this particular paper for half a year at least, grateful for the chance to sit at a desk again, to write articles that come with a byline and the smell of fresh ink, even if the stories never make the front page or shake any foundations. Jay figures maybe he’s had enough of sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. At least, for the time being. 

And since he’s worked here, he thinks he’s spoken to Danielle a grand total of five times. Maybe six, if you count the time she’d asked him to hold the elevator for her, though they’d ridden up to their floor in silence after that. But she’s standing here now, a smile on her face, her perfectly painted nails holding tightly to the empty coffee mug. There’s something in her features that is unmistakable, something Jay feels like even someone as hopeless and out of touch as he is would be remiss not to notice. 

For a moment, Jay feels like he can see his life unfurl out before him suddenly, spiraling out from that one little question. He could cancel his plans, assure Danielle he’s free, go with her to whatever party she has in mind. Kiss her midnight. Call her the next day. Take her to lunch on their shared break. To dinner. To his apartment. He could do all the things real people do, could be the man with the job, the pretty blonde girlfriend, and the occasional ghost that follows him around that he pretends not to notice. 

But still, Jay hesitates to answer, his response there on his tongue, poised but not entirely ready. 

Because, just as clearly, he can see another evening unfolding in his mind. Because his plans are with Fauna. Chinese takeout and cards and the radio on and the window open in his apartment to let in the sounds for the parties all over the city. Two people figuring out how not to be alone together. 

“Spending the evening with a friend,” Jay says, holding out the pot to fill the mug in Danielle’s hands. “You?” 

Danielle looks disappointed. It’s intriguing, the expression on her face. Jay can’t remember the last time he did something like this: talked with a pretty girl, thought about taking her to dinner, tried to imagine another day with her in it.

At least, someone who wasn’t Fauna.

Not that he...well...not that he thinks of her in such a way. 

“A party with my sister,” Danielle says, and there’s still that hopefulness in her tone when she adds, “Thought you might want to keep me company.” 

Just in case Jay might have somehow misunderstood her intentions. 

Jay offers her an apologetic smile, slipping the pot back into the machine. “Sorry. Maybe some other time.” 

He can tell by the look in Danielle’s eyes that he hasn’t said the words in a way that invites her to follow up on them. 

As Jay walks back to his desk, he knows there’s a multitude of excuses he could give himself as to why a party with someone he works with is a bad idea. Mixing business with pleasure. Or the way he still feels nervous to be around so many strangers. Being out in the city on a night of revelry is always more trouble than it’s worth. He doesn’t entirely trust himself to remember how to say no if there’s someone there with him who doesn’t say no either. Plenty of excuses to justify his brush-off.

But Jay figures that’s all they are. Excuses. Entirely unnecessary. Because he knows the real reason he said no is because he doesn’t want to cancel on his plans with Fauna. Even if plans seems entirely too strong a word for their intended night in. 

She’s become a friend of sorts in the months since she’s been in the city, his own little ghost that is far more fun to have trailing him around the city. At first, they’d started spending time together because he’d promised to show her around the city, to help her get acquainted with the streets and places she hadn’t seen before. Then he’d needed someone to tag along when he’d had to drop something off for his boss outside of the city, a drive he could have easily made alone but one that felt more doable with someone in the passenger seat. That, too, had been colored with excuses: he needed a navigator, someone to keep him on track. The excuses had been easy after that: he’d heard of a new Italian place, did she want to see if it was worth the fuss? He needed coffee and the place she worked was as good as any other. He needed a break from a story he couldn’t quite get right. A multitude of ways to avoid admitting how much he liked spending time with her. 

Tomorrow, he’s invited her to his place, a first, really, and something Jay hopes he doesn’t start to regret. The place is new, at least to him, smaller than the place she’d seen years before and less embarrassing, he hopes. He has an actual bedroom now, not just a bed that folds out from the wall, and a tub that doesn’t have rust stains around the drain. There’s still water stains on the ceilings and a spot in the floor that dips but at least he’s not hiding baggies of powder in film canisters anymore. One thing to be proud of, at least. 

Jay knows what Fauna would say if he mentioned Danielle’s invitation to her.  _ Go, spend time with her, it’s fine. We can do Chinese another time. It’s fine.  _ An insistence that he won’t want to read into and that would feel impossible to wiggle his way out of.

Which is exactly why Jay figures he’s better off just not mentioning it at all. 

~ ~ ~ 

“Here,” Jay says, waving a carton in Fauna’s direction. “Lo mein.” He hands it over without looking up from where he’s sorting through the rest of the delivery order.

Fauna is silent for a moment, before she says, “You hate lo mein.” 

“So?” Jay frowns, looking at her. “You don’t.” It’s her favorite, he figures, judging by the number of times she orders it whenever they go to the place that has become their favorite. 

The first time they’d been, Fauna had let him do the ordering, seemingly more than happy to let him recommend dishes and hand over things for her to try. It hadn’t been until they’d left, standing on the sidewalk as he’d fished around his pocket for his keys that she’d admitted she’d never had Chinese before, which had only make Jay wish he’d taken her to his favorite Chinese place in the city and not just the one that was closest to the coffee shop. He’d given her to the fortune cookie, watching her crack it open, both of them puzzling over the fortune tucked inside:  _ you will soon find great riches _ . “I guess dinner is on you next time, then,” Jay had said and she had laughed and it had felt good to hear the sound, especially since Fauna seemed so reluctant to do so much as even smile. He’d remembered that from the time they’d spent together, how he figures he could count the number of times she’d done something more than glare or roll her eyes on one hand. Now, it’s becoming slightly easier to get a smile out of her, a laugh, a grin that she doesn’t seem to be trying to flatten with pressed lips. 

Jay doesn’t have many plates and the ones he does have certainly don’t match. His kitchen table has only one chair, something that had never seemed like a problem before, so they eat in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, the radio DJ crackling through the speakers in the kitchen. Top 40 Hits, or something equally designed to capitalize on the end of one year, the start of another. Something by the Jackson 5 and he listens more to Fauna humming along than to the actual song. 

From outside, the sounds of the city drift in through the cracked window, the air just chilly enough to make Jay consider shutting it. Even though it’s still early, the city is all too alive. Conversations float up from the sidewalks, the words punctuated with trills of laughter, with insistences on going to this place or that, with assurances that this new year is going to be the one they’ve been waiting for. Music from the restaurant on the corner mingles with the chatter, with the sounds of honking cars and impatient drivers, with slamming doors. Jay feels more at home than he has yet, which is a nice change. Though maybe it has something to do with the fact that he tried to tidy the place up a little bit, make it look less like a complete hopeless case of a human being lived here and more like someone who was still trying to get moved in, even a year later. 

It surprises Jay, how easily the time passes. Not that he and Fauna ever seem to have trouble holding a conversation when they’re together. They’ve long since moved past being able to only talk about the single thread that tied them together, long since moved past silted attempts at filling in missing information without seeming too interested, or pressing too hard. Now, they have a whole new venacular to draw on: his coworkers and hers; stories he’s working on and regulars she wishes would find a new place to haunt; her roommates and Ohls; the things they’ve done together in the months since Fauna has been in the city. It’s easy to be with her in a way that makes Jay feel like he’s letting out a breath that he’s been holding very tightly to for a long time. No need to act like a car’s backfire doesn’t make him flinch. No reason to ask why her gaze sometimes looks like she’s trying to understand something from miles away. Like with Ohls, Jay thinks there’s something to be said for not having to hide away all those ugly parts of yourself. 

“I think you’re cheating,” Jay says again, as he collects their cards and starts to shuffle them together. 

“How could I be cheating? It’s Go Fish,” Fauna points out and the absurdity of her words makes him want to laugh. “Maybe you’re just a sore loser.” 

“Both of those things can be true, Fauna,” Jay assures her, continuing to shuffle the deck. “I never claimed I knew how to lose graciously.” 

Fauna smirks, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Clearly.” 

He wags the deck at her. “Want to play again?” 

Fauna glances at the watch on her wrist and he has a brief, embarrassing, moment of thinking she’s about to leave him. “It’s almost midnight,” she says instead.

Jay frowns, glancing toward the clock on the stove. “What? Really? Already?” He looks at the deck in his hand with renewed interest. “How long have we been playing cards?” 

At least it hasn’t been Go Fish the entire time, though Jay thinks they resorted to the game because they’d exhausted just about everything else. It had been easy to keep playing, to keep dealing and shuffling and laying out cards, lost in the flow of conversation with her, in the sound of the radio, in the chatter from the world outside. 

Fauna waves her hand, pushing aside the cards he’s still holding out toward her. “No more Go Fish. I’m tired of beating you.” 

“How gracious of you.” Jay laughs, setting the cards on the table. “We might be able to see some fireworks. I don’t know, I wasn’t here last year.” 

“You were still in Mexico?” 

He nods. Him in Mexico. Her in Sparks. Both unaware that by the end of the new year they’d be back in this city again, drawn both to it and each other. He’s never been one to give any thought to fate, to the universe, to the type of thing that girls in flower necklaces and boys with unwashed hair are always talking about on street corners, but it does seem strangely fitting that their paths would cross again, that they would both come back here. That they would find each other. 

“I think I was passed out in a bar somewhere,” Jay admits. “Tequila.” He grimaces.

Fauna smiles, though her eyes have that faraway look that he’s come to understand, the one that he knows takes her back to Nevada. “I was at my friend’s house because I’d been fighting with Jimmy Lee.” She rolls her eyes at herself, at the idea of it. “We watched the countdown on TV and I just closed my eyes and wished…” She doesn’t tell him, just rolling her eyes again. “Isn’t that stupid? Wishing like it’s a birthday cake or something.” 

“Well, isn’t that what resolutions are?” Jay asks. “Kinda like a wish. And everyone makes those at midnight.” He wants to ask her what she’d wished for, if being here with him is somehow in line with what she’d wanted a year ago, standing in her friend’s living room. 

“I guess.” Fauna looks almost relieved by his point, some of her embarrassment slipping away. “So what’s yours?” 

Jay smirks. “My wish?” 

“Your resolution.” She smiles as she puts emphasis on the word. 

Jay leans his back against the couch, rubbing absently at the growing scruff on his chin. “I haven’t thought about it, I guess.” 

Fauna lifts her eyebrows. “You still have,” she glances at her watch again, “two minutes.” 

“What about you?” 

Fauna opens her mouth to answer, then pauses, seeming to reconsider. Finally, she sighs, and says, “I think I want to stay here.” 

He knows she means Los Angeles. He lets himself think, for just a moment, that she means something else. 

“It feels good, being here,” Fauna adds. “Like I’m supposed to be here. I’m happy.” She scrunches up her nose and he loves when she does that, how it crinkles up her freckled cheeks. “I guess that’s a stupid resolution, right? Wanting to be happy.” 

Jay scoffs. “Why would  _ that _ be stupid?” 

“Aren’t you supposed to...I don’t know...aim big?” 

“I think that’s probably the biggest goal there is,” Jay assures her. “And I’m going to steal it.” 

“You can’t steal my resolution.” Fauna flicks a card from the top of the deck in his direction but the smile on her face takes any of the force from her words. 

Jay just grins at her. “My next year’s resolution will be to be more original,” he assures her. 

She’s about to protest but it’s impossible to miss the sound of the countdown, drifting in through the open window. Jay feels a twinge in his chest, a surge of contentment, of reassurance, of feeling connected, for once, with every single person around him. All of them united, for just a moment, for the next ten seconds. 

Fauna stands and goes to the window and while she doesn’t open it further, she does lean toward the glass, peering at the people on the sidewalk, at the glittering restaurant on the corner, at the apartments across the way with their bright windows. He goes to join her, watching her out of the corner of his eye under the pretense of studying the city around them. 

At midnight, among a chorus of  _ Happy New Year _ s and cheers and shrill, off-key singing, and the pop of fireworks from somewhere over the city, Fauna looks at him and smiles. The bursts of color from the fireworks dust the freckles on her cheeks for just the briefest of moments, sparkling in her eyes before fading away with a sizzle. 

Of course, Jay knows that’s not possible. They’re not nearly close enough to the fireworks for such a thing. But still, he would swear it to be true, would swear to the sparkle in Fauna’s eyes, the blush of color on her cheeks. 

The way he feels in that moment seems to bode well for him finally having made a resolution that he can actually keep. 


	6. February, 1970 (Los Angeles)

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/carInteriorSoundscapeGenerator.php?l=75597672303030303000)

**February, 1970**

**Los Angeles**

It’s happened suddenly, this sort of comfortability. Or maybe it hasn’t been sudden at all. Maybe Jay just hasn’t been good at paying attention. Months ago, after that first meeting in the diner, after that first cup of coffee, after the first time they made a plan that wasn’t an accident, it had been slightly uncomfortable, uncertain, awkward in the way trying to put on last year’s jacket was awkward. A tugging, a shifting, an attempt at fitting into something that felt just a little bit stiff. Now, Jay can’t pinpoint the moment when things with Fauna had stopped feeling uncertain. When the silences had stopped hanging in the air between them. When it had become common place, normal, for them to spend their evenings, their Saturdays, together. He can’t exactly pinpoint when he stopped feeling anxious to see Fauna and when he started looking forward to their dinners, their moments together, with nothing put anticipation. Or when it became normal for Fauna to immediately launch into a conversation rather than a silted  _ hello _ an obligatory  _ how have you been _ . 

So maybe this comfortability isn’t sudden at all. Maybe Jay just hasn’t noticed. Maybe he’s stopped trying to keep track. But since the start of the new year, he feels like his days, his weeks, these two fledgling months, have often been spent in the company of someone else. He thinks it’s been years, genuinely, since he could say something like that. 

It doesn’t surprise him, anymore, when the passenger door to his car swings open and someone drops into the seat beside him. The first few times he’d waited at the curb to pick Fauna up from her job or her apartment, it had come as a shock, the suddenness with which his space had been invaded, despite the fact that he had been anticipating the invader. Now, it feels like an exhale, a relief of sorts. The shudder of the car as the door opens, the shift as Fauna settles her minimal weight into the seat. The smell of her perfume and shampoo and coffee and lingering sweetness. Now it feels strange when Fauna isn’t there beside him.

Fauna pulls the door shut behind her before reaching up one hand to brush the tangle of hair away from her face, a fluid motion that Jay tries hard not to stare at. With her other hand, she holds out a waxy paper bag, the source of the sweetness that’s tickling his nose. “I had to practically snatch it from Margaret’s hand.” 

Jay takes the bag and peeks inside. A banana nut muffin, his favorite, the thing he always orders when he makes up an excuse to see Fauna at work. He smiles, pinching a piece of the muffin off and popping it into his mouth. “I guess I’m honored you’re threatening to fight your manager for a muffin.” 

Fauna smirks, trying to hide her smile. “Well, don’t let it go to your head.” 

Such a warning seems to come a little too late. 

Jay pulls away from the curb, rejoining the flow of traffic. As Fauna ties her hair back into a ponytail, the ends of her hair brushing against the constellation of freckles on the nape of her neck, she says, “Where are we going?” 

“So you really don’t listen to anything I say. I figured.” Jay, too, tries to hide the smile that always seems to want to bloom so easily on his face. 

He likes the sound of her laugh, how it seems to sprinkle with a lightness across everything in the car. Jay feels like he’s becoming a selfish man, that he still hasn’t grown out of the impulse to have more, more, more, to never be satisfied with what he has right in front of him. He knows now what Fauna’s smile looks like. He knows what it sounds like when she laughs. But still, he wants more. He wants to know how she looks when she  _ really _ laughs, when she doesn’t seem to still be holding herself back. He wants to say something that makes her head tip back, her eyes close, something that makes her laugh fill the entire space she’s in rather than just twinkle like dust motes in a beam of sunlight. Jay can’t remember the last time he’d wanted so much. Gone, apparently, are the days when he’d sworn his byline on a respectable story would have been all he’d needed. 

“I listen,” Fauna protests on the end of her laugh and Jay knows she does, knows it’s true, because he’s seen her eyes settle on his face, seen the quiet stillness of her body, seen the patience on her face as he’s told her things that have been impossible to tell anyone before. 

“I asked Ohls to look into something for a story I’m working on. Nothing exciting,” Jay assures her when Fauna lifts an eyebrow. “I’m keeping my nose clean.” 

Another quirk of her eyebrow, a slight uptick in the corners of her lips.  _ For now _ , her expression seems to say, but it feels different than similar assures in the past, when people were quick to assure Jay Singletary that a tiger couldn’t change his stripes, regardless of how determined he was to avoid bars and street corners and wear a clean suit. Fauna seems almost amused, like she’s uncovered this part of him, the part that knows only how to be curious, that part that wants a more, more, more that doesn’t have to do with her. 

He likes it, that she knows this about him. 

It terrifies him, too, how much he likes it. 

He thinks there was a time, once, when he wasn’t entranced in the movement of someone’s wrist. 

Fauna fiddles with the radio, turning the dial with a quickness that makes Jay question whether she can hear anything at all. She ignores him, continuing her perusal of the stations, the jolts of static and sound that mingle with the noise around the car -the hum of tires on road, the rumble of the cars around them, the blare of horns from somewhere ahead. In the car, like in his apartment, they are in a universe all their own, enclosed in a space that doesn’t feel too small to Jay at all. Sharing his space with someone else, with no escape and no distractions, doesn’t seem so difficult anymore.

Finally, Fauna settles on a station playing the Big Brother version of “Piece of My Heart,” Janis Joplin’s rasping voice cracking the small space of the car. He’d never cared for her before but he’s found himself slightly more tolerant since Fauna seems to have a particular fondness for the band. 

“What’s the story?” She asks, satisfied, settling back into her seat. 

“A string of robberies,” Jay says, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in spite of himself as Janis warbles  _ come on, come on, come on _ . 

Fauna gives him a skeptical look. “That doesn’t sound like keeping your nose clean.” 

“It’s boring, trust me,” Jay assures her. “Seriously, not even front page news. I just need a few details for the story.” 

They’ve talked before about his writing, about that impulse he still has to want to be the best, the brightest, the person everyone wants writing for their paper. He knows that’ll never happen, now, something he manages not to make sound so mournful when he says it to Fauna over whatever meal they’re sharing. Still, there’s a part of Jay that always wonders if maybe, maybe, he’ll stumble onto a story again anyway. One that might be front page. One that isn’t doled out magnanimously after the heavy-hitters have already been assigned. 

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” Fauna says and she’s smiles and there’s a reassurance there that Jay doesn’t mind at all. 

He smiles back, nods, and thinks it’s maybe not so bad, being in this car in L.A. traffic with her on his way to dig up whatever scraps he can to make a story that no one will read a little more interesting. 

Jay asks her about work, about the shift that apparently ended in threats of violence for the sake of a muffin, and Fauna tells him about the usual, about the things and people that Jay has grown familiar with over the months, just like he knows Fauna could undoubtedly hold her own in a conversation about the inner-workings of a newspaper. 

“Oh!” She says with a suddenness and Jay can practically see the idea as it snaps into Fauna’s mind. “I forgot to tell you-” 

Whatever it is that Fauna had neglected to mention is lost on Jay, because of the way that her hand as reached out, her fingers settling on his arm, a result of her sudden burst of memory. It seems like a reflexive gestures, made without thinking at all, her hand against his skin. But Jay feels like he can’t focus on anything else. They’ve made a habit of not touching each other, something that has seemed wholly unintentional and without discussion, something that just happened that way for whatever reason. The ease of the touch now, the way Fauna has reached out for him, feels like a weight in his chest, heavy and uncertain and comforting all at once, threatening to crack him open, to pull him under. 

And Fauna doesn’t seem to notice at all, not the touch or his reaction, and when her hand falls away, being used instead to punctuate some part of her story, Jay tries not to mind it. 

Just like he tries not to think about it at all. 

When was the last time someone touched him? When was the last time he wanted them to? Jay isn’t sure he has an answer for either question, isn’t sure he wants to delve into that particular line of thought anyway. 

Instead, he just shakes his head at her story, smiling as he leans forward to retune the radio, just to ruffle her feathers, and maybe, he thinks, to inspire her to reach out and touch him again. To push his hand away or grab his arm again. Fauna does neither of those things, though her laugh seems like a fair consolation prize. 

As traffic starts to move again, Jay turns the car down Franklin, already wishing that he had gone to Ohls earlier, that he and Fauna didn’t have to bother with this stupid errand before going something else, something entirely more fun, something that didn’t feel like work. The station is only a few blocks away, so Jay figures he might as well get this done, be reliable and responsible for once, and hope that Fauna isn’t sick his company by the end of it and that he might convince her to go to dinner or something so that he can put off working on the story for a little while longer. 

“Have you started looking at listings for a new place?” Jay asks, trying to pull his thoughts back to the present. 

Fauna rolls her eyes. “It seems impossible,” she mumbles. “Plus I feel like I’ve only barely gotten settled into this one.” 

“Your roommate really should have been more considerate before getting engaged,” Jay remarks, grinning at her. “She’s really messing with your plans here.” 

“That’s what I told her,” Fauna says, imitating the tone of someone impossibly put-upon. “But I also think Katie is equally as irritated so-” 

She stops talking so suddenly that Jay thinks, for a sudden, ridiculous moment, that he might have just gone deaf. The car goes silent like someone switching off a radio. But it’s not only that; Jay feels the entire mood shift and change, Fauna’s body going ramrod straight beside him that he’s almost afraid to look at her and see what’s wrong. 

The color has drained from her face and Jay feels like he knows that expression, that posture, all too well. The sudden collision of memory with the present, sharp and sudden enough to knock the breath from your lungs. “What’s wrong? Fauna?” 

Fauna’s not looking at him at all, her focus on something out the windshield, outside of the universe of their car. Jay turns his head and pulls a breath in through his teeth. Of course. He hadn’t even thought about it when he’d turned down this street, had only been thinking of the quickest way to the precinct. “I’m sorry.” 

Fauna swallows, shaking her head. “I...I guess I didn’t realize…” 

The house looks entirely like it did that night, something that Jay figures makes sense, since the building itself seems impossible to change. The oddness of its edifice, how it looks more suited for the jungles of South America and not a street in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, certainly an eyesore to the completely normal houses that sit behind fences on either side. It’s impossible to miss the house with its blocky face, the open doorway, the bizarre, latticed door that hides all its secrets. 

And just as quickly, the house is behind them. The place where Hodel lived for years, where Jay knows now, without a doubt, countless women lost their lives. Where Fauna, seeming so alive and solid and whole sitting in the car beside him now, almost lost hers. 

“I didn’t realize it was just...right here,” Fauna says quickly, glancing over her shoulder in an attempt to catch another view of the house. Like someone unable to stop from staring at a car accident. 

“I know. It seems ridiculous,” Jay says, shaking his head. “That it’s just...here. In the middle of everything.” 

Fauna frowns, turning back around, crossing her arms across her chest, as though trying to fold in on herself. “When I was there I felt...it felt like I was just in the middle of nowhere. That no one was going to be able to help me. But it’s right…” She shakes her head. “It’s just right here.” 

There are houses, buildings, a gas station. All of those things flanking the house where Hodel had conducted all his dirty business, uncaring and unbothered. 

Driving past the street, all the houses and cars parked along the sidewalk, it’s all too easy for Jay to remember that night, now everything had been dark and sticky hot and empty, how he’d run all the way and kept running even though his head was ringing and his lungs felt like fire. Every time he’d wanted to slow down, to wait, to take a breath, he’d been certain he would be too late, and that had only made him go faster, press harder, though he’d felt conspicuous and wrong in his bloody shirt, a gun in his hand. 

“Is he...is he still…?” 

Jay shakes his head before Fauna can finish the question. “No. At least, I don’t think so. I did a little digging when I got back...I couldn’t help it.” Jay sighs, mostly in disappointment at himself. A dog with a bone, only harder to train. “I guess no one really saw him after that night. He’s overseas somewhere, as far as anyone knows. I guess the house...he sold it. I don’t know who lives there now.” 

The color still hasn’t returned to Fauna’s cheeks and she looks small there in the car beside him and that, too, feels like a weight in his chest. An ache that Jay doesn’t know how to soothe. He doesn’t know how to help her, what to say, how to make her smile again. 

“Do they know...what...what happened…” 

Jay can only shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if they would care, anyway. Not if they’ve got the money to buy a place like that.” 

Fauna’s brow furrows and she looks far away, she looks like a girl again, and Jay wonders about the night and the things they’ve never talked about. What it was like for her while he was trying to talk his way out of a cell. “They should care,” Fauna says so quietly that Jay almost can’t hear her over the hum of the car’s engine, the tires on the road. 

He nods, though he knows his response and hers are both pointless. He knows, maybe better than anyone, that money is the only thing people care about. That the truth of that particular story, of Hodel’s, of Tamar’s, of Fauna’s, is inconsequential to most. 

Jay swallows, trying to soothe the tightness in his chest, the part of him that aches to see Fauna’s face, the haunted look in her eyes. “You know what, let’s do something. A movie. Dinner. Just...something.” 

Fauna looks at him, surprised. “What about the police station?” 

He waves her words away. “I can do that tomorrow. Never met a deadline that can’t be broken.” His smile is slightly forced and Jay is sure Fauna can tell but he tries anyway. “What do you think?” 

There’s a flicker of uncertainty, a beat of silence that Jay tries not to take personally, and then she nods. “Okay.” 

By the time they make it to the theater, a place Jay has been more than a few times in the past, intent on getting out of the California sun to nurse a hangover or a buzz, Fauna seems to have relaxed somewhat, the tightness leaving her shoulders, the color returning to her knuckles as she unclenches her hands. 

They get tickets to the newest James Bond movie, something neither of them really care much about but the times match and Jay doesn’t mind the dim lighting of the theater, the smell of the popcorn and quiet of it all. Which his why he figures the place was always a haven to him when he needed to just step out of his life for a bit, to pretend to be someone else for a few hours. He hopes it might work that way for Fauna, too, that putting the rest of the world on hold will ease the crease from her forehead, will make her forget that night and the way it had felt. Of course, Jay knows it’s probably ridiculous and short-sighted of him to think such a thing could even be possible. But he wants that for her, even if it’s just a little while. 

After the movie, they walk to the diner around the corner, and it’s like it always has been, that ease, that comfortability that has so easily snuck up on Jay, catching him by surprise, making him smile when he doesn’t even realize he is. They debate the absurdity of the movie, the impossibility of finding roommates in L.A, the way Jay’s boss has a habit of making his every sentence sound like a command from a drill sergeant, and they don’t talk about the house on Franklin, the man who lived there, or the women who never made it out again. 

It’s dark in the only way L.A. is ever truly dark -no sun, no stars, sky perpetually brushed with the glow of lights- by the time Jay pulls up in front of Fauna’s apartment building to drop her off. She lingers, one hand on the door handle in an absent sort of way. Looking at her fills Jay with a strange sense of anticipation, different from the way he feels when he normally knows that he’s going to see her. This one feels heavy, expectant, like a tipping point.

Finally, Fauna lifts her eyes to his. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “For…” She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t have to.

Jay smiles, nodding. “Yeah. Course. It was fun.” 

He immediately wants to wince at the words, which sound like the sort of thing he should be saying to a stranger after a first meeting, rather than someone he considers to be a close friend, the person he knows him better than anyone, the person who he spends an unmentionable amount of time thinking about.

Fauna gives him a small, shy sort of smile, as though she feels the same way about his words. She shakes her head and then leans forward, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth, against the edge of his lips, a chaste sort of kiss that lingers and makes Jay feel, suddenly, like everything has been pulled into a sharp focus. 

If he’d thought he was in danger of being dragged under by the weight in his chest before, it’s nothing compared to how he feels now.

Fauna doesn’t give him the chance to respond, to react, to do anything at all but sit there. She opens the door and slides out in one seemingly fluid motion and Jay turns his head only when the door has slammed shut behind her and she’s on the sidewalk, unreachable with her back to him and her keys in hand. 

The press of her lips on his skin could be nothing at all. A friendly gesture. An expression of gratitude. 

But sitting there, struck dumb behind the wheel of his car, it feels like everything. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is inspired by my personal experience going to L.A. and driving around looking for the so-called "Franklin" House (now the Sowden House.) I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling of driving down the street, trying to follow my GPS, and then all of the sudden bam. There is was. Right in the middle of all the regular houses, cars parked along the street, trashcans on the sidewalk, bus stops, and the Shell gas station I had to turn around in so I could park and walk up to the house. But I did see a cat chilling on the front steps so that was equally as great.


	7. April, 1970 (Los Angeles)

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/laundromatNoiseGenerator.php?l=26729837512927265308)

**April, 1970**

**Los Angeles**

There is something about Jay’s hands. 

It’s the sort of thing Fauna would never have thought a person noticed about someone else. Their face, sure. Eyes, of course. After all, she’s spent the majority of her life trying to avoid looking at anyone for too long, tilting her head or dropping her gaze to keep them from noticing the brightness of her eyes, how unlike her mother’s they were. She knows how easily someone’s eyes can be noticed.

There are other things, too. The swoop of shoulders. Height. A smile. But she’d never thought about someone’s hands before. Never had cause to, really, before Jay. 

Now, Fauna finds herself drawn to them, to his fingers, his palms, the roughness of his knuckles, ridges beneath skin. Maybe because she spends so much of her time now, sitting in his apartment, the book in her lap just a ruse to hide how she enjoys watching him at his typewriter, or sitting with a furrowed brow and a pen between his fingers, scribbling notes onto the papers that are scattered around. Or maybe it’s because she’s starting to become more and more familiar with the feeling of his hands on her, how his fingers have seemingly learned how to make her sing like the keys on his typewriter, how he can trace her curves and freckles and hollows with as much familiarity. 

There’s something about his hands, and how they make even the most mundane of things seem intriguing and interesting. Like the way he slips coins into the washing machine in the laundromat a block over from his apartment, slipping the quarters between his fingers before relinquishing them to the machine. Fauna figures she should be ashamed of herself, utterly embarrassed to have become one of  _ those _ girls. Here she is, watching the movement of his fingers in the middle of a crowded laundromat on a Saturday morning. 

She  _ should _ be ashamed.

Still, Fauna only looks away when she gets caught, when Jay lifts his head and turns in her direction and she pretends that her attention has been on the basket of clothes in front of her this entire time, where she’s sorting through their second load. It’s a mixture of his things and hers, a routine that started first out of convenience, a way to save both quarters and trips to the laundromat, though now it seems perfectly natural to see her stuff in with his, a tangle of fabric in the plastic laundry basket he didn’t have until she brought it to him. 

It’s a little bit like his apartment -the tangle of her things in his. Her shoes by the door. A book on the coffee table. An extra toothbrush on the bathroom sink. A dress half under his bed. Pieces of herself among the place he calls home. 

Jay comes to join her, putting his hand on the edge of the basket, a casual, careless gesture. “You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” he says, lifting an eyebrow, an invitation to share whatever she’s thinking of. An invitation that Fauna knows he’ll let pass without comment if she changes the subject, neither of them pressing at bruises that need no help flaring to life. 

Fauna shakes her head, offering him a smile, because she certainly can’t offer him an explanation. “No. Just trying to figure out how long we’re going to be here.” 

She makes it sound like she minds. She doesn’t. She doesn’t mind any bit of stolen time with Jay. 

“Bored already?” Jay teases. 

Fauna makes a face, as though annoyed by his smirk. “No. I love the laundromat. It’s always so exciting.” Her voice is flat, unamused over the sounds of the rattling machines and tumbling clothes and a half dozen other conversations. 

Jay smiles and shakes his head and she likes that, too. The curve of his smile, how she’s finally familiar with the way it  _ really _ looks when he smiles with sincerity, how it always seems shy and tentative, a whispered question, a hesitation, before it blooms across his face. The way he shakes his head -the nape of his neck, the beginning of scruff on his cheeks. If she were to reach out, to lay her hands against his face, the stubble would scratch her palms, would press against her skin, a lingering memory. It’s the type of thing she might do if they were in his apartment, but she’s still trying to figure out how to be bold enough to touch him in public, in a space that doesn’t belong just to the two of them. 

“Come on,” Jay says, lifting the basket, leaving the current load of laundry to its own devices in the rumbling machine. “Might as well get comfortable. We’ll probably be here for hours.” He’s teasing her, and she likes that, too.

Fauna follows him to a pair of plastic seats by the window, one that affords a view of the sidewalk beyond, with its constant flood of pedestrians, and of the street and all its traffic. When they’d first started coming together, there had been the added benefit of having one person to leave to get food from the bodega next store, or coffee from a place further up the street. Fauna has no idea when they stopped separating, when it became part of the routine to stick together for the long haul, to settle in to the sounds of the machines and the people and to punctuate the mumble of conversations with some of their own. 

When Jay sits down beside her, his shoulder brushes against hers, the closeness of the chairs making it impossible to avoid touching. It seems ridiculous that something like the brush of Jay’s shoulder against hers would set her heart racing, all things considered, but it does. The press of his shoulder only makes Fauna want to be closer, to angle her body toward him, to twine together in the way she’s steadily getting used to, falling asleep with Jay’s arm across her hip, or the lingering press of his lips against her shoulder, or her hand settled over his chest. 

It scares her as much as it thrills her, the feelings that always seem to be coursing through her body now, the longing for someone else. Before Jay, it had been different, felt different. Boys were a way of fitting in, having something to talk about with the other girls who would actually let her into their circles. An escape, a way out. Someone who would look at her for a little while and whisper sweet things that she could try and remember later to take the sting out the not-so-sweet-things that Jimmy Lee was so fond of saying. With Jay, it feels like there’s no ulterior motive, nothing to run from anymore, no one to strike out with words or hands. There’s just him, her, this city, this laundromat, the feeling of his shoulder against hers. A feeling of coming undone, only to have him put her back together again just as easily. She’s spent her entire life trying not to be so easily unraveled but she can’t imagine being anywhere else. 

Despite her protests, her teasing, Fauna doesn’t mind the laundromat in the slightest. Doesn’t mind being with Jay. Doesn’t mind the feeling of accomplishment that comes along with the sorting, the folding, or even the waiting. Doesn’t mind the sound of the machines, the smell of the detergent, the warmth that seems to hang over the room with a sticky sort of heat. It’s the latter, more than anything, that makes her drowsy, makes her body languid and heavy and entirely unmotivated. The sound of Jay’s voice, the feeling of his body against hers, is probably to blame for the rest of it.

Not that Fauna even realizes that she’s drifted off to sleep until she’s coming awake again, suddenly like the snapping of fingers, her eyes opening at the feeling of Jay moving against her. Her head is on his shoulder, her weight against him, and when she blinks, dazed, and lifts her face toward his, he looks at her apologetically. “Sorry. I was just going to go move the clothes to the dryer.” 

Fauna sits up, trying to shake the sleep from her head, the fuzzy, cottony feeling of it. “I can help.” 

“It’s okay,” Jay says, getting up, reaching for the basket at their feet. “I’ll be right back.” 

He goes to leave and Fauna reaches out without thinking, her fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand from the basket to hold in hers for a moment. Why is it that something so simple, so mundane, as his hand in hers can bring back a flood of feelings, of memories, rushing over her all at once. The way he takes her hand, briefly, as if by accident, when they walk down the sidewalk on the way to some errand. His hands on the steering wheel of his car as he waits to pick her up from work. His hand on her knee while she reads a book, tucked into the corner of his couch. His fingers tracing the freckles on her cheeks, the bow of her lips, the curve of her clavicles. She’s seen the other things he can do with his hands, the violent, unbridled things, but when he touches her it always feels like a whisper. 

“Thank you,” she says and Jay smiles and she’s okay with him thinking that she’s thanking him for taking care of the laundry. 

When he comes back, his shoulder presses to hers again, and Fauna fits her head against it, this time with more intention, so that it doesn’t seem just like an accident, her being lulled to sleep by fabric softener and the tumble of wet clothes, falling against him because he’s there. 

Jay leans into her, too, moving closer, his body steady against hers. 

Fauna reaches for his hand and holds it tightly in hers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please know if I ever become a published author, my trademark will be scenes set in laundromats for a reason I have yet to discover. 
> 
> Also, yes, I did want to include "Deborah" by T-Rex in this scene so badly.


	8. July, 1970 (Los Angeles)

Listen to the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/dustyScratchedVinylNoiseGenerator.php?l=59433964633030303030)

**July, 1970**

**Los Angeles**

His dreams are often full of the sounds of people screaming. Of whimpers and whispers. Of cries cut short. Of attempts at bargaining that will never be fulfilled.

Because of this, it takes Jay a moment, a heartbeat, a breath, to realize that he’s not dreaming at all.

That the sound of someone screaming is there, in bed beside him. 

He awakes with a start, a suddenness that traps his breath in his throat, that sets his heart pounding in his chest, galloping out of panic, fear, surprise, confusion. Jay chokes out a breath as he sits bolt-upright in bed, the blankets tangled around him suddenly feeling like a trap, a vice, something to just add to the confusion swirling through his mind. 

It’s strange, he thinks, to wake up like this, when he’s pretty sure he wasn’t even dreaming at all. 

It’s Fauna, curled up in bed beside him, who is screaming. 

He so rarely hears this sound, coming from her, that it frightens him for a moment, freezes him in place, leaves him feeling utterly clueless as to what he’s supposed to do next. But she lets out a whimper, a choking sort of cry, and it spurs Jay into action. He reaches for the lamp while whispering her name, a hopeful entreaty, an attempt at easing her awake gently. 

The room floods with light and that, at least, is a relief. But Fauna still sleeps, her eyes wild behind her closed lids, her body a comma in bed beside him. The sounds she makes, the muffled cries, the whimpering, nearly splits him in two and Jay moves toward her, wanting to curl his body around hers, wanting to take her in his arms, to hold her to him, to promise her that he won’t let anything happen to her, that she’s dreaming, that whatever she sees in her mind is gone now.

He settles instead for his hand on the curve of her back, his voice a whisper in her ear as he leans toward her, trying to shake her awake.

Fauna’s eyes open suddenly and she inhales, holding the breath in her chest for a moment before seeming to remember that she’s supposed to let it out again too. Her eyes find his, wide and round and glassy and it cracks him in half, seeing the relief flicker across her face when she sees him there. 

“Hey,” Jay says softly, his hand still against her back, moving up to tangle in her hair. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It was a dream.” 

How many times has she said those same words to him? How often has he been the one to wake them both up, the sound of her voice in the darkness the only thing to ease the pounding in his chest. 

Fauna closes her eyes briefly, exhaling as she lets her forehead press against his knee. But then she shifts, sitting up, the bedside lamp casting faint shadows across her face. “I’m sorry.” 

“For what?” Jay lets his fingers stay in her hair, around the wild curls that he thinks he might be responsible for in the hours before, when they’d first gotten into bed. 

“For waking you up like this.” 

Jay scoffs, shaking his head. He wants to put his arms around her, wants to hold her against him, wants to be solid enough for everything else to fall away. “I’m pretty sure I’ve still got you beat there.” 

Fauna shakes her head but she doesn’t smile and she doesn’t look any less apologetic. Jay leans closer, letting his lips linger against her forehead. He can feel her trembling slightly beneath his touch, just enough to let him know that this one was bad, that it’s still lingering in the tightness of her shoulders, the shaking of her hands. “It’s okay,” he says again softly, against her skin. “It’s okay. It’s over.” 

Slowly, Fauna nods, but she doesn’t move away from him, from his touch. Jay wants to ask her but it seems unnecessary. He knows about the things that keep her up at night, that have her tossing and turning in bed beside him. Not just Hodel, but the others, too. Sepp in the basement of a dingy warehouse. Her mother and the years of sharp words and sharp hands. A man, more than old enough to know what he was doing, and a little girl, and the backseat of a car. All enough to keep Jay awake too, some nights, even after Fauna has gone to bed, when he has her in his arms and her head on his chest, his eyes tracing the whorls in the ceiling as he makes silent promises to keep her safe. 

Before Fauna, Jay never would have thought himself capable of protecting anyone from anything, of being strong and solid and sturdy enough to be the thing that someone clung to in the middle of the night. Now, it’s all he wants. 

“I’m-” 

“Don’t,” Jay says gently, moving back so Fauna can see the hint of a smile on his face. “Don’t say sorry again.” 

Those, too, are words she’d said to him more than once. Fauna rolls her eyes, an imitation of annoyance on her face, as though she doesn’t appreciate having the tables turned on her. 

Instead, she says, “I’m fine,” in a way that almost sounds like she means it. “You should go back to sleep.” 

Jay doesn’t miss the  _ you _ , doesn’t miss the way her fingers are still shaking, or the way her eyes have the resigned look of someone who knows sleep isn’t going to be coming back any time soon. 

So he kisses her, softly, and goes to slide out of bed. “I know what’ll make you feel better.” 

Jay thinks it’s unfortunate that these type of nights have developed their own sort of routine. How the nightmares, the rude awakenings for both of them, are still common enough that they both know exactly what to do when it feels like they’re the only ones left awake in the city. 

He goes into the kitchen, not surprised to hear the sound of Fauna following after him, her bare feet almost silent on the uneven wooden floor of his apartment. It doesn’t take long to get from the bedroom to the kitchen, but with every step, Jay feels like he can see little hints of her in the space, reminders of her presence that linger even on the rare night when she isn’t with him. A blanket folded across the back of the couch. A paperback on the coffee table. One of her shoes in the corner without its partner. Another chair at his kitchen table. A Polaroid on the fridge. Jay had never been overly fond of the space before, now he doesn’t mind it so much. 

Now, at least, when he opens the fridge there’s things inside. Edible food, leftovers, the things he thinks a normal person should have. He reaches for the milk, sets it on the counter, closes the fridge, and the square of yellow light disappears, leaving the kitchen and living room bathed only in shadow and the ever present orange glow from the streetlights. 

Jay sets the milk to boiling in a pot on the stove, turning back to watch Fauna. She’s wearing a shirt of his, the only thing she ever wears to bed, if she’s wearing anything at all, and the sight of her in the orangey darkness of the apartment is enough to take Jay’s breath away. But that’s not exactly something new. Not only is he struck, as always, by the very sight of her, especially in moments like this one, when she’s wearing his clothes, her hair a mess, but it seems like a surprise to even see her here, in his space, at all. Jay still thinks that he’s going to wake up from this moment, from this life, and find that he’s just invented it for himself, the desperate thoughts of a desperate man, conjuring up just one more ghost to keep him company. 

But Fauna is real enough, flipping through his records with deft, familiar fingers, picking one finally and Jay knows if she were looking at him, he would make a face, roll his eyes, call her predictable. But her back is to him, so he only smiles. He knows the album well enough, one of her favorites, and it’s equally predictable that, when she settles it on the turntable, she takes the needle and moves it to the second track, the volume low, a whisper really, but loud enough for the small apartment in the middle of the night.  _ Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play _ . 

As the milk heats on the stove, Fauna walks into the kitchen and Jay put his arms around her and it’s a relief, a steady inhale, to have her fitted against his chest. It still scares him, even in moments like this, but for an entirely different reason than it used to. Within the past few months, his nightmares have taken on a decidedly different quality, and almost always feature losing Fauna. 

“I can get the mugs,” Fauna says, and to Jay, it sounds like  _ thank you _ . 

He nods. “I knew you were going to put this on.”  _ You’re welcome _ . 

Fauna smiles, stepping away from him, moving on silent feet toward the cabinet. All this, too, is routine. The mugs, the music, the milk on the stove and the chocolate shavings that are waiting to be stirred inside. Just another part of this life now that Jay is building for himself. Slowly, tentatively, one day, one moment, at a time, trying not to be so afraid to admit he wants it. 

They take their mugs to the couch, the record playing through, the only sound in the apartment for the most part. Outside, the city sleeps, only the occasional slamming door or car engine shattering the illusion that they aren’t the only ones awake. The quiet is comfortable and Jay notices that Fauna’s hands are still again, steady around the mug of hot chocolate in her hands. Her knee is pressed to his as they sit together on the couch and he forgets, for a moment, that he used to be the type of person who woke up screaming in an empty apartment and reached for a bottle or baggie to ease the tightness in his chest. 

Most nights, they finish their drinks and leave the mugs on the coffee table until morning, the only proof of the nightmares that had kept them both awake, but tonight Jay doesn’t protest when Fauna ends up stretched out across the couch, the two of them somehow sharing the space despite the fact that Jay feels like he’s far too tall to really be comfortable. The arm of the couch is pressing against the small of his back but he has Fauna’s head on his chest and George Harrison assuring him that with every mistake, they must surely be learning, and Jay doesn’t mind any of it at all. 

In fact, he’s pretty sure there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

Except maybe in bed. Maybe. 

When the record ends, Fauna doesn’t make a move to get up and flip it to the other side, and when Jay glances at her, her eyes are closed, her face soft and still. Her fingers are splayed across the skin above his hip, another steady source of weight and heat. The record spins, whispering and scratching on the turn table, impatient, but Jay isn’t the least bit interested in getting up to turn the player off, or to move them into bed. He’s too languid, too comfortable at the moment, despite the press of the couch arm into his back. Absently, he threads his fingers through Fauna’s hair, listening to the hiss of the end of the record, and he thinks if he could tell the man he was five years ago where he would be now, that he wouldn’t have believed it. 

That thought makes him smile as he shifts just enough to bring Fauna closer. 


	9. December, 1970 (Mammoth Lakes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff? Yes. Very little plot aside from shameless fluff and being cold? Yes. Personal headcanons for Jay's childhood? Yes. A giant moose head? Yes. 
> 
> I just have a lot of feelings about Jay's younger years, okay. 
> 
> Also, as always, thank you to young-editor-1999 for truly giving me life and awesome comments that I do not deserve. Seriously you are amazing. I promise I will reply to your comments ASAP!

Find the [soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/fireNoiseGenerator.php?l=30303049573830303140)

**December, 1970**

**Mammoth Lakes**

Jay has been woken up in a lot of different ways. Most of them entirely unpleasant. He’s been woken by slamming doors, yelled commands, sharp curses. By whimpers and muffled cries and rumbling earth and the endless whisper of gunfire from just out of sight. By nightmares so real that he can taste churned dirt and blood in his mouth when he opens his eyes. By ghosts with frosted skin and frozen breath, their vacant expressions still accusatory and unforgiving. By the rattle of men in the cells beside his as he dries out in the drunk tank. By women slamming the door behind them. By pots of water unceremoniously tossed in his face.

But this is, without a doubt, the _ best _ way he thinks he’s ever been woken up before. 

Even if… “Your hands are freezing.” 

Jay doesn’t open his eyes as he speaks the words, doesn’t so much as stir or make an effort to spare himself the press of icy skin against his. Fauna laughs, soft, like it’s an after thought, her voice quiet in a quiet room. Her fingers don’t still in their efforts, tracing the slope of his nose, the scruff on his cheeks, the curve of his jaw. Her touch elicits goosebumps, which in and of itself isn’t unusual, though Jay likes it better when he’s shivering because it’s her, touching him, and not because it’s frigid outside. 

But beggars can’t be choosers, after all. 

“It’s freezing,” Fauna says, as her hand settles gently against the curve of his face. “In case you haven’t noticed.” 

“I’ve noticed,” Jay assures her. He finally opens his eyes, trying to fix her with a stern expression that couldn’t be sincere even if he had a million years to practice it. “Is that why you’re awake? So you can torture me with your cold hands?” 

Fauna is much better at affecting a serious expression. “Yes. If I have to be awake and cold so do you.” 

Jay reaches for her hand, though ironically he misses the cold press of her hand the second it leaves his skin. He holds her hand in his, bringing it to his lips, pressing his lips to her skin. He doubts it does much to help warm them, but neither of them seem to mind at all. 

“Better?” He asks, shifting so that he can reach for her other hand, too, threading their fingers together.

Fauna gives him a rare girlish smile, her cheeks spotting with color. Jay has long since given up trying to keep track of the number of times he feels utterly struck by her, by every little thing about her, but he definitely feels struck now. Despite the months he’s had to get to know her, to spend his moments with her, Jay is still taken by surprise when she seems to unfurl completely, when she looks like the young woman her age suggests her to be, rather than the serious-eyed soul who was undoubtedly old long before Jay ever even met her. “It’ll do.” 

Jay sits up, trying to keep the quilt tucked around him, though it seems like fighting a losing battle. Despite the clothes he’d worn to bed the night before, the early morning air is chilly and he half expects to see his breath clouding in front of him. The fire from the night before has burned down to little more than embers, glowing red among the charred wood, and judging by the way the window pane is rattling against the wind, it’s even colder outside. “I can work on the fire.” 

Fauna nods, albeit reluctantly, torn, no doubt, for the same reasons that Jay currently feels. Getting out of bed means, ultimately, making the room warmer. But it still involves getting out of bed. 

Exhaling, Jay sets his jaw with determination, and forces himself out from beneath the blankets. The floor is icy beneath his bare feet and it’s almost enough to make him give up the idea all together. Thankfully, the room is small, the fireplace only a few yards from the bed, and Jay is more grateful for the close confines now than he had been the night before, when everything had seemed almost claustrophobically close. The room is simple -rustic is the word he thinks he’ll use in his article, just to put a better spin on things- with the bed facing a kitchen of sorts -a sink and stovetop at least- and the fireplace in the middle of the room between the front door and the bathroom. Really, a person would never have to leave the room if they didn’t feel up to braving the weather outside, though Jay has a feeling his editor-in-chief wouldn’t be entirely pleased with an article solely about the woodland critters making up the cabin’s decor and nothing about the surrounding town. 

“Next time,” Jay mutters as he kneels in front of the fireplace, roughly grabbing a log and tossing it in among the embers, “we’ll go somewhere warm.” 

It’s not exactly a vacation, though Jay isn’t going to complain about a weekend away from the city while his paper is footing the bill. Though he’s starting to think that Ethan, the guy who normally writes the travel section for the paper, definitely knew what he was avoiding when he was suddenly unavailable to write the article because his wife was having a baby. Jay is starting to feel skeptical about  _ that  _ particular story, given the way he doesn’t think he’ll ever be warm again and the knowledge that leaving the room will likely require a shovel and a fair amount of cursing. 

Fauna hums, noncommittal at his comment. “The snow _ is _ pretty,” she points out after a moment. 

Jay looks over his shoulder, lifting his eyebrows. “Traitor.” 

She smiles at him and Jay knows, even in moments like this one, that he’s still waiting for her to get tired of him. His whole life has been comprised of the endings of things and he so desperately wants this -every smile, every laugh, every press of cold fingers to his skin- to be nothing but beginnings. It seems inevitable for her to grow weary of the man that is Jay Singletary, and Jay can only hope he can put it off for as long as possible. 

Maybe that’s why he tosses another log into the fire, hoping to warm the room, to chase away the cold, to give her this, at least. 

Jay manages not to burn himself, nor the surrounding cabin, nor the unfortunately oppressive moose head that hangs above the hearth, staring down with glassy eyes. Jay knows when he writes, he’ll use ‘charming’ in a purely non-sardonic way, though he and Fauna spent a good thirty minutes the night before after checking into their room trying to find all the woodland creatures decorating the room. The moose had been as impossible to miss then as it is now, and when they’d climbed beneath the covers the night before, she had muttered, “It feels like its watching us,” something Jay can’t entirely disagree with. 

Though, more than avoiding burning the place down, Jay actually manages to conjure up a decent fire, the wood snapping as it catches. The room warms, both in temperature and from the flickering light from the logs, and Jay moves back, his skin smarting from the sudden heat.

“You’re good at that,” Fauna remarks and Jay rises to fall back into bed beside her. 

“I guess you can take the boy out of Kansas, but you can’t take Kansas out of the boy,” he says dryly, letting his head fall back against her legs, extended before her. 

Overhead, the shadows cast by the fire flicker across the smooth ceiling and for just a moment Jay is watching his older brother carefully stoke the fire burning in the living room, chasing away the darkness and the cold just beyond the room. The sounds of the wood crackling, the sap popping as it heats, the hiss of the flames, could as easily be from decades before. Only the feeling of Fauna makes him feel tethered to this moment. 

“Was it cold like this? In Kansas?” Fauna’s tone overly casual tone gives away her curiosity, not that Jay can blame her. They so rarely talk about Sparks, and even more rarely do their conversations turn toward the life he’d had before running away from home at sixteen and hopping a bus bound for California, determined never to look back. 

Jay makes a face, remaining rooted against her legs, his feet flat on the floor, warm, now, thanks to the fire. “Yeah. A lot less snow. But still cold as hell, especially before the sun is up and you’re trying to figure out how to milk cows without taking your gloves off.” 

“I’m trying to imagine you milking cows at all,” Fauna says, and when Jay turns his head to look at her, she looks entirely too amused. 

“I was good at milking cows, thank you very much,” Jay says with faux-indignation. His prowess in a barn is certainly not something he would ever defend with any seriousness. “A real professional.” 

Jay thinks there was a time, once, when the sight of someone’s arched eyebrow didn’t make him feel like he was about to come completely undone. Or when the uptick of someone’s lips, the smirk on her face, didn’t leave him feeling utterly at her mercy. But he certainly can’t remember that time, looking at Fauna now. “How does someone become a professional at milking cows?” 

“You get up at five every morning to do it,” Jay says flatly, though there’s something about talking about it with Fauna that makes it slightly easier. But he’s starting to get used to that, by now. 

“Do you ever miss it?” 

For a bit, the only sound comes from the fire in the hearth, the snap and the sizzle of the wood, the gutter of the flames. He’s had years to stop feeling this way, but there’s still a twinge of guilt as he says, “No. I don’t.”

Fauna’s eyes are serious, luminous, understanding, as they settle on his. “I don’t either,” she says softly and for a moment they’re just two people who ran away from home, just two more orphans in a city full of them. 

Except Jay doesn’t feel so unmoored anymore. 

In fact, he feels more at home than he ever has. 

Frigid cabin and imposing moose head notwithstanding. 

Jay sits up, lets his hand linger for a moment on her knee, still tucked beneath the quilts on the bed. “Feel like braving the snow?” 

Fauna makes a face, the night sky of her freckles scrunching as she wrinkles her nose. “I think I like it better from right here.” 

“I do have to write 600 words,” Jay points out. “Even I might have a hard time coming up with that many words to describe this charming wallpaper.” Though, then again, maybe not. The wallpaper is quite the sight, with its parade of forest creatures hand stenciled across its length, all frozen in some charming scene. 

“I’ll help you,” Fauna assures him. “You can start with Harold.” 

His eyebrows lift. “Harold.” 

She points over his shoulder, toward the unlucky moose. “He seems like a Harold.” 

Jay smirks, and he can’t exactly find an argument to her words. “‘The majestic Harold surveys all who enter his domain with a firm, yet welcoming eye,’” He intones with far more seriousness than he actually feels.

Fauna grins, the crackling fire playing across her features. Jay thinks he’s long since run out of the words he knows to describe her; he’s trying to invent some new ones. “‘With all the snow outside, it’s far more tempting to stay in. But be careful: Harold cheats at cards.’” 

“A masterpiece,” Jay assures her and he wonders what she can see in his face, in his eyes, if he looks as utterly taken as he feels. 

Needless to say, with the fire snapping and popping, and the room flush with warmth, Jay isn’t going to fight too hard against the idea of hanging around inside, in bed, for a little while longer. Especially not when Fauna reaches for him, when he can still taste her smile when they kiss, when he shivers now for a completely different reason when her hands find his face. 

The story can wait. 

Something he never thought he would hear himself say. 

But he’s also never learned how to say no to temptation, either. And he’s not about to start now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also the inspiration for the beginning of this comes from the song "Crack the Shutters" by Snow Patrol so if you really want to get all up in your feels listen to that song


	10. March, 1971 (Los Angeles)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Fauna and books is a headcanon I hold very close to my heart.

Find the[ soundscape here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/customRainInTheCity.php?l=17171837252271196035)

**March, 1971**

**Los Angeles**

She used to hide books underneath her bed, tucked into the far corner, where they couldn’t be seen on the off chance that Jimmy Lee would come storming into her room. Her mother already had enough things to tease her about and Fauna didn’t want to risk giving her any more ammunition. Restless nights were at least spent in the company of the words on the page, the books so carefully squirreled away, taken from classrooms and classmates; life with Jimmy Lee had taught her to have quick fingers relatively early on and no one ever seemed to want to admit to misplacing a book. Squinting through the darkness, puzzling over the print on the page, was far better than tossing and turning all night, listening to Jimmy Lee and one of her boyfriends scream and slap at each other before taking it into the bedroom. She read the books dozens of times over, staying in the same stories -a yellow brick road, a wardrobe, a far off island, a home full of sisters who loved each other- until she could add another to her collection. 

She thinks, now, as she runs her fingers along the spines of the books laid out in front of her, that the books from her childhood might still be there, tucked in a corner under her bed. Left behind when she’d packed only two suitcases to run away from home all over again. Then, the books had seemed so hard to come by, an impossible find when one had made it successfully into her hands and into the corner of her bedroom. Now, Fauna can’t believe the books and books and books that spill out before her. 

It had been Jay’s idea, this job. The bookstore is close to his apartment, one they’ve come to a dozen, two dozen times, since it started to become a given that they would do things together. She’d been sheepish, embarrassed, at first, when Jay had first held the door to the bookstore open and ushered her inside. Fauna hadn’t realized how plainly her face gave her away until she’d caught Jay grinning at her, looking far too pleased with himself. “One of my favorite places in the city,” he’d said rather than trying to tease her or comment on her small-fish-big-pond wide-eyed reaction to the store.

Of course, bracing for the teasing, expecting it, had just been a reflex, something left over from her time with Jimmy Lee, with the girls at school, the ones in the neighborhood. Fauna thinks now, months later, she’s not immediately anticipating having to defend herself. 

When Jay had first mentioned following up on the  _ help wanted  _ sign propped on a stack of books on the counter, Fauna had unceremoniously dismissed the idea, rolling her eyes and shaking her head until she’d realized that Jay was watching her with just the slightest touch of confusion on his face. Her reaction, it had taken her a beat to realize, had surprised him. “I can’t,” she’d said, even though there was no deep love in her for the coffee shop, for the people she worked with, for the people who visited the place day after day. 

“Why?” His brow had still been furrowed, his question sincere, and she’d wanted to hold him, then, wanted his arms around her, wanted to kiss him over and over and everywhere, because his confusion was genuine, because he didn’t look at her and see the obvious answer.

“Because,” she’d said and when it had been obvious that Jay wasn’t going to let her get away with the eye roll, the one word answer, “Because they don’t want to hire someone like  _ me _ .” Someone who never finished high school. Someone who couldn’t entirely shed the lilt to her voice that made people look closer and ask  _ where are you from?  _ and offer up a small town. Someone who still snuck into bookstores and libraries like a fugitive who might have to slip a book between her headboard at any moment. 

She hadn’t looked at Jay as she’d said it, hadn’t wanted to. Even in the year or more that they’d been together, she still hadn’t grown tired of the way he looked at her, didn’t want him to start seeing the girl she knew she was. She didn’t want him to look so close that it made him want to stop looking at her all together.

But Jay had only shaken his head, had been the one to roll his eyes, had only taken her in his arms and spent the night whispering into her hair and her skin and her freckles the kind of person he thought she was. And it had been that following morning, still flush from the memory of the night before, when Fauna had walked back into the book shop and applied for the job after all. 

Sometimes, she still wonders why they’d decided to hire her on in the first place. But in the few weeks since she’s started work, Fauna has gotten better at just enjoying the change of pace, the freedom to wander the quiet store, to shelve the books, to help eager readers find the perfect book, to help wide-eyed children get a title off a high shelf, to do something that doesn't involve her trying to nurse a steam-burned wrist while trying to pour cups of coffee. 

Fauna lets her fingers fall away from the stiff spines on the shelf, the store quiet around her. They’ve started letting her work alone, trusting her to close the place up, especially on nights like this one, when it seems like everyone in L.A. has some other place to be, some other interest that doesn’t involve books. The sound of the rain pattering against the windows only makes it more clear that it’s likely to be a quiet night. The rain might not keep everyone in, but it certainly makes them think twice about braving the weather purely for a book or two. 

She’s made several passes through the store already, trying to collect stray books, or fix crooked rows. Fauna wanders, studying the view of the street through the rain streaked window, watching the beads of water sluice down the glass as the streets darken. It feels like home. This place. This city. The person she is, here. Every day, she wakes up and worries, for the briefest of moments, that she’s back in Sparks, that she’s dreamed all this, like she used to daydream through her classes, imagining a dozen different escapes for herself. But then everything comes into focus, too real to be a dream, and she feels relieved all over again. 

Fauna is in the back, contemplating opening one of the new boxes of books, when she hears the bell above the shop ring and it surprises her, this sudden intrusion. Nights like this one make it feel like the store belongs just to her and Fauna tries not to be disappointed by the interruption.

Especially when the bell on the counter dings three times in rapid succession and she feels a twinge of annoyance. People like that remind her of the customers she was happy to escape when she left the coffee shop, the ones who clearly thought their time was more important than anyone else’s.

She tries to smooth down her annoyance, schooling her features into the smile she’d perfected long ago, the one she gave teachers and the Sisters and the girls at school and her mother’s boyfriends. 

When Fauna steps out from the back, she finds Jay standing on the other side of the counter, looking far too pleased with himself. He taps the bell again. “Any service around here?” 

Fauna reaches forward to still his hand, to quiet the bell. “Only for paying customers.” 

Jay puts a hand to his heart, feigning offense. “What makes you think I’m not a paying customer?” 

“You don’t look like the type.” 

Jay grins, shaking his head. The droplets of rain collected in his hair dot the counter, discarded by the gesture. “Are you kidding? I love books. I love,” he pauses, tapping the book currently on display on the counter, “seagulls.” 

Fauna pulls a copy of  _ Jonathan Livingston Seagull _ just out of his reach, though she thinks it’s really an excuse to have him grab for her hand instead. “What are you doing here?” She asks, like she minds in the slightest. 

Unsurprisingly, Fauna often thinks the only thing that could improve upon quiet evenings among the books would be if she could spend it in Jay’s company. 

Like his hair, the shoulders of his jacket and the nape of his neck are beaded with water, the rain against the windows sounding just as insistent now as it had an hour before. Fauna thinks if she wasn’t so happy to see him, she would feel guilty about him braving the weather just to come here. 

“Writer’s block,” he says, his go-to excuse whenever he feels like shrugging off any sort of responsibility and indulging in his restlessness. “And I brought dinner.” 

Jay puts a brown paper bag on the counter and, on cue, Fauna’s stomach rumbles. She recognizes it as coming from the bodega on the corner, the place that she thinks might have the best sandwiches in the entire city. She reaches into the bag, not at all surprised to find that Jay has brought her favorite.

As they eat, the rain picks up, almost angry in its insistence, knocking against the windows, encasing the bookstore in sound, in evening darkness, an island in the middle of an empty city block. Even the door gives a little shudder against the wind, as though the rain is eager to come in for an escape from itself.

Jay makes a face, glancing over his shoulder and toward the window with an expression of distaste. It’s impossible to see out, impossible to see anything but their own reflections, the books, the glow of the lights inside. “And here I thought it was going to stop by the time I left.” 

The lurch in her heart is familiar, even after all these months, an impulse, a need to reach for him so he doesn’t leave. Another residual effect from Sparks, she knows, the moment of panic, the sinking feeling when one of her boyfriends starting letting his eyes wander and the idea of being left on her own again, left to the mercies of Jimmy Lee’s whims without someone she could escape to, had prompted Fauna to do exactly that: to reach out in whatever way she thought would keep his attention on her for just a little while longer. Her eyes on his beneath her lashes, his hand at the hem of her skirt, letting him mistake the desperation in her kiss for desire. But with Jay, it’s easier to smooth down that impulse, to ease the wildfire that tries to catch in her chest. She isn’t that girl anymore. And Jay’s eyes don’t wander. 

So it’s easier to smile, to mean it, to let her fingers settle against the smoothness of his wrist. “I guess you’ll just have to stay.” 

Jay looks back at her, smiles, and a fire of a completely different sort catches in her chest. “I guess I will.” 


	11. June, 1971 (Los Angeles)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My re-watch of this show makes me want to add another chapter...contemplating doing exactly that! Can't stop, won't stop. 
> 
> Also Jay is totally a cancer, don't @ me.

Soundscape can be [found here](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/summerNightThunderNoiseGenerator.php?l=58662551464900012618)

**June, 1971**

**Los Angeles**

It’s his birthday and he’s starting not to mind the fact that he can’t get away with ignoring the day anymore. 

Last year had been the first time in a long time Jay could remember looking at the calendar and not minding the day that looked back at him. Before, there had been no real reason to make note of it. No reason to pay any attention to the day at all. Another year, another birthday. What did he care? 

Of course, Fauna won’t let him get away with trying to wave the passage of time off.

He repays her in kind, of course, perferring vengeance in the form of studiously wrapped presents and well wishes whispered into her hair. 

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the day, just a little. Of course, Jay figures the same could be said for most of his days now, another change that never would have occurred to him even when presented with a candle to wish upon. He’s spent so long trying to dull the edges of his every moment that it’s strange to find himself more happy than not, strange to find the lightness in his chest, the lingering smile on his face.

Strange to not mind a little bit of indulgence on his birthday. 

Outside, the day is hot, heavy, grey, stagnant. A storm is on the horizon, inevitable and unavoidable. Jay thinks that at some point in his life he would have seen the building weather as an ill omen, an excuse to justify his belief that the universe is not all that fond of Jay Singletary. He would have pointed this out to Ohls, or the bar tender, or Lily, or whoever he’d fallen in with at the moment, the pair of them undoubtedly well matched in their beliefs on the universe and its distaste for a certain newspaper reporter.

Now, Jay doesn’t even mind the weather. Doesn’t mind the low grumble of thunder, the promise of rain. 

In fact, it’s the perfect excuse to stay inside, to open the windows, to put on a record, to brace for what’s to come.

Though Jay figures his desire to stay in has everything to do with the company; the weather is just a convenient excuse. 

“Okay,” Fauna says softly, almost to herself, as she stands by the counter, the snick of a lighter a punctuation to her whispered comment. “Almost ready.” 

Jay is tempted to tell her to take her time. He doesn’t mind waiting, especially not when it affords him the chance to study her like this, without her notice, her back to him. He feels like within the past year -longer, if he’s really being honest- he’s become well versed in studying her. The blades of her shoulders, the freckles that dust across the skin between them. The curve of her ankle, her heel, her feet bare on the wooden floor of his kitchen. The crook of her elbow, set at an angle, as she fidgets with the candle, the cake, as Jay pretends he doesn’t notice exactly what she’s doing. 

He wonders how she would react if he told her that what he really wanted for his birthday was to spend the entire day cataloging her, using his fingers and lips and teeth and tongue to map and remember her, as film would never be able to do the job justicel. 

The thunder rattles the windows, closer and more persistent now, as Fauna finally turns around. The cake isn’t much of anything, a cupcake really, frosted and dotted with sprinkles and barely big enough for two people to share and honestly Jay thinks it’s perfect. Maybe it’s because of the candle on top, winking in the air that manages to actually blow in through the windows, making the swirl of frosting seem all the more celebratory. 

Or maybe it’s the person holding it, the way that candlelight flickers across her features, how she looks entirely too pleased with herself as she sets the plate down on the center of the table in front of him. Fauna smiles and the thunder rumbles and Jay feels that familiar tightness in his throat, the feeling of being entirely too full for his own skin. 

“Happy birthday,” Fauna says, as though she hasn’t already said this a half-dozen times before, and she settles in the chair across from him, the chair that doesn’t match its mate, the one that he’d gotten just for her, when he’d wanted her to keep coming to his apartment and wasn’t sure how to tell her. “You can make a wish.” 

Last year, she’d said something similar, smiling and shy, as though uncertain as to how he would respond to the small celebration, to the cake, the candle, the attention.  _ What am I supposed to wish for?  _ He’d asked, incredulous only because he’d woken up earlier with Fauna in his bed and couldn’t imagine what else he was supposed to need. But Fauna had only smiled at him, unaware of the thoughts in his mind.  _ Anything you want _ . 

Jay makes a show of closing his eyes, of blowing out the candle, though he doesn’t bother with a wish at all. He just wants this. This. This. This. 

“What did you wish for?” Fauna asks, reaching out a finger to steal a bit of frosting from the top of the cake. 

She licks the tip of her finger and Jay forgets, for a second, to breathe. 

“I can’t tell you,” he says. “It won’t come true.” 

Fauna lifts an eyebrow. “Sure, you-” 

The thunder growls, loud and impatient, and Jay smirks, far too pleased. “See.” 

She leans back in her seat, pretending exasperation, as the windows shiver from the sound. “I guess we won’t be going out later.” 

“That’s okay,” Jay says, shaking his head. He takes the candle from the top of the cake, laying it aside, though he doesn’t make a move to reach for the fork, to steal any of the frosting. “I think I’d rather stay in.” 

Another crack of thunder, as though the universe, for once, is in agreement with Jay Singletary. 

Fauna swipes another bit of frosting. “What should we do, then?” 

She ignores the hint of a smirk that ticks up the corner of Jay’s lips. 

Outside, the thunder is closer, persistent, the storm darkening the city, making everything feel like an inhale, a breath held in anticipation. Jay lets his eyes meet Fauna’s, settling on the green that has become so familiar to him now. “Do you want to know what I wished for?” 

Fauna shakes her head. “No. You don’t want to jinx it.” 

Last year, he thinks the idea of it might have scared the hell out of him. He’d woken up every day with that exact fear, that exact worry. Unwilling to jinx the life he’d suddenly found himself in, this life that felt so perfect, so comfortable, so full of contentment, that it couldn’t possibly have been his.

Now Jay finds he doesn’t worry as much. 

“I think it’ll be okay,” Jay says and Fauna smiles, nods, her foot settling over his underneath the table. 

_ This _ , he wants to tell her.  _ This is what I wish for.  _

But he he’s pretty sure she already knows. 


End file.
